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THE 

GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

AND FAREWELL ADDRESSES 

OF THE 

SOUTHERN SENATORS ON THE 
EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR 



THE 

Great Parliamentary Battle 
and Farewell Addresses 

OF THE 

Southern Senators on the 
Eve of the Civil War 



BY 



THOMAS RICAUD MARTIN 



NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1905 



f^ 



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LIBRARY of OONStiesS 
Iwu Uopies •level V01I 

JUN 24 1905 

^Jouyiti^m entry 

COPY b. 



COPYRIGHT, 1905 
BY 

THOMAS RICAUD MARTIN 



\ 



CONTENTS 

PAGE, 

Great Senators and Great Speeches in the Old Senate 
Chamber 7 

The Old Senate: The Great Debate Between Senator 
John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and Edward D. 
Baker of Oregon 12 

The Great Debate Between Gen. E. D. Baker and John C. 
Breckinridge of Kentucky, with an Outline of the Pre- 
liminary Discussion 16 

Pen Pictures of the Old Senate and the New : Senator 
John J. Crittenden's Great Speech and the Vice- 
President's Oration 56 

The Great Parliamentary Battle and Farewell Addresses 
of the Southern Senators on the Eve of the Civil 
War 79 

Farewell Speech of Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana on the 
Occasion of His Withdrawal from the United States 
Senate on February 4, 1861 89 

Celebrated Debate Between Benjamin and Baker in the 
Senate Chamber on January 3, 1861 98 

Farewell Speech of Robert Toombs of Georgia, Delivered 

January 7, 1861 144 

Farewell Speech of Senator Jefferson Davis, U. S. Senator 
from Mississippi, on the Occasion of His Withdrawal 
from the U. S. Senate, January 21, 1861 180 

Farewell Speeches of Senators Clay and Fitzpatrick, U. S. 
Senators from Alabama, on the Occasion of Their 
Withdrawal from the U. S. Senate, January 22, 1861 . . 201 

Farewell Speech of Senator Slidell of Louisiana on the 
Occasion of His Withdrawal from the U. S. Senate, 
February 4, 1861 215 

Judah P. Benjamin 225 

Edward Dickinson Baker 238 

John C. Breckinridge 251 



GREAT SENATORS AND GREAT SPEECH- 
ES IN THE OLD SENATE CHAMBER 



The object of this volume is to call attention to 
the genius and character of the distinguished South- 
ern Senators of antebellum days. A conspicuous 
place is assigned to Judah P. Benjamin, who intel- 
lectually was a towering figure among the senatorial 
leaders who figured in the old Senate Chamber on 
the eve of the Civil War. A sketch of his eventful 
and stormy life aims to emphasize the distinction 
he achieved in the United States and England in the 
field of law. Picture the life of the man who, in 
every sphere in which he figured, shed luster as a 
statesman, diplomat, writer and citizen. His fare- 
well speech was delivered in the Senate February 
5, 1861. 

Brief sketches are presented of the brilliant Sena- 
tors John C. Breckinridge, who graced the Vice- 
President's chair, and of the brave and accom- 
plished Baker, of Oregon, who early won his spurs 
as a matchless orator and whose noble and heroic 
death at Ball's Bluff touched a sympathetic cord in 
the hearts of his countrymen. 

Within these pages are the farewell speeches of 
the remarkable coterie of Southern Senators who 
surrendered their commissions to cast their fortunes 



8 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

with the Confederacy. They were as distinguished 
a body of men as ever influenced a legislative as- 
sembly, and were great actors among the political 
forces of their day. These speeches give them rank 
among the great masters of English, eloquence, and 
style. 

The period anterior to the Revolution produced 
a number of men who stand preeminent in American 
history for their intellectual powers and as the de- 
fenders of the Constitution. No greater names 
adorn the pages of American history than those of 
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John 
Hancock and Samuel Adams. These men sat in the 
convention that framed the Constitution of the 
United States. They were the great figures of the 
epoch at the birth of the American Republic. 

The War of 1812 produced a group of men whose 
fame is dear to every American patriot. 

The founders of the Government did not seem to 
foresee the sectional issues destined to overturn the 
policies they formulated, and that slavery would 
bring about an agitation that would shake the fabric 
of our Republic. 

It was- as late as 1820 that the changed condition 
became recognized and that the slavery issue had 
hoisted a danger signal that pointed to war. Thomas 
Jefferson speaks of it as falling "like a fire bell in 
the night." He wrote to his friend, Mr. Holmes: 
'T considered this agitation at once as the death 
knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the 
moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sen- 
tence; the geographical line coinciding with the 
marked principle moral and political." 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 9 

The agitation over the Missouri Compromise in 
1820 defined fines as between two confederacies, 
the one non-slaveholding and the other slavehold- 
ing, divisions that were to grow more and more 
apart, creating sectional animosities that would in- 
flict wounds that could not be healed save by war, — 
cruel war, — blood and carnage, wounds so deep that 
only a revolution could satisfy the combatants, a 
revolution the grandest and saddest of modern 
times. 

The period of 1832 stands out in our history as 
that of the great tariff debate, when the discussion 
emphasized the coming storm. It was the strong 
hand of Andrew Jackson that held the discordant 
elements at bay. In that famous Congress the de- 
bate assumed proportions that carried with it rumors 
of war, and some of the representatives in that 
Congress declared that before they would sub- 
scribe to the tariff bill then under discussion they 
would advocate nullification. This was a great 
Congress, and the men who constituted it used all 
their methods of compromise to avert what then 
seemed to be an impending struggle. Their efforts 
were crowned with success. 

Then followed the period of 1850, when that 
galaxy of men, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, debated 
the great compromise measures and analyzed the 
question whether the State had a right to secede, and 
when Mr. Webster conceded that the Constitution 
was a compact. The compromise measures of 1850 
simply deferred what was to come a decade later. 

The most eventful and sensational page of Ameri- 
can history was opened at noon-day, December i. 



10 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

1 86 1, when the Vice-President of the United States 
called the Senate to order. This Congress was des- 
tined to become more momentous than any of its 
predecessors. From the opening day until its close 
there were memorable scenes fraught with sensa- 
tional episodes, and every day seemed to have its 
omen of a darker day that was to follow. 

A small band of men represented the Southland in 
the Senate, among whom were R. M. T. Hunter and 
James M. Mason of Virginia; Thomas Bragg and 
Thomas L, Clingman of North Carolina ; Clement C. 
Clay, Jr., and Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama; 
Albert G. Brown and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi ; 
Alfred Iverson and Robert Toombs of Georgia; 
Lazarus W. Powell and John J. Crittenden of Ken- 
tucky; David L. Yulee and Stephen K. Mallory of 
Florida: John Hemphill and Louis T. Wigfall of 
Texas. In this Senate sat Stephen A. Douglas, 
Edward D. Baker, Charles Sumner, and their col- 
leagues, presenting a solid phalanx of opposition. 
The most striking figure in the forefront of the 
Civil War Senate was Judah P. Benjamin, the dis- 
tinguished statesman and jurist from Louisiana. 
These men stand preeminent in the legislation of 
that day, and they fought the first battle of the Civil 
War. No more pathetic scene is recorded in his- 
tory than the farewell departure of these men 
from the scene of their labors in the service of 
the United States Government when they surren- 
dered their commissions to cast their lives and their 
fortunes with the. cause of the Confederacy. The 
purpose of these pages is to recite some of the great 
and marvelous surprises of their lives and to present 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE ii 

to the reader the polished, brilliant, eloquent 
speeches delivered during this session of Congress. 
It is a senatorial page that has never been written. 
The writer should dip his pen in blood to tell the 
story of what these men aimed to tell to their coun- 
trymen. 

It was on the eve of a fratricidal war. They 
stood in the calm of the coming storm that was soon 
to burst upon the country in all its fury, carrying 
devastation, ruin, and bloodshed in its fiery path. 
The power of language is inadequate to convey the 
suffering that was to fall upon the homes of the 
Southern people. No compromise could avert the 
impending struggle, and we had finally reached the 
point where the conflict had to be settled by the ar- 
bitrament of the sword. Noble men were to lay 
down their lives on the altar of conviction, while 
innocent women and children were to suffer what 
only the heart can feel and words cannot describe. 

The great parliamentary battle as revealed in 
these speeches tells the story of the Nation's conflict 
with a fervor of eloquence that appeals to us even 
at this late day, though the heart-reaching voices 
have long since ceased to speak. These men, 
martyrs to a lost cause, lived and acted their part at 
a crucial period of our history, and their names 
should be preserved and live long after "storied urn 
and animated bust have gone to decay." 



THE OLD SENATE 

The Great Debate Between Senator John C. 
Breckinridge of Kentucky and Edward D. 
Baker of Oregon 



The old Senate was a grand-looking Chamber 
with its lofty dome; the Vice-President's chair be- 
neath the eagle draped in folds of the American 
flag, its oval shape and its taper pillars supporting 
the lofty gallery. Before the senatorial gladiators, 
Breckinridge and Baker, who were to enter the 
arena of debate on the night of August first, 1861, 
sat an array of talent which has rarely, if ever, been 
equaled. Distinguished men of the nation sat near 
the speakers to hear, criticise, approve, or condemn. 
A graphic page was about to be written in the 
records of the American Congress. There was an 
expectancy floating around that something uncom- 
mon was to happen, and accordingly the galleries 
were packed. 

The old Senate Chamber, though grand to look 
upon, was an acoustic failure and ordinarily the 
human voice reverberated through its lofty dome 
with a confused sound. Not so with the voice of 
Breckinridge — it had a silvery ring which in spite 
of his rapid enunciation could be heard distinctly in 

12 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 13 

every pert of the Chamber. John C. Breckinridge 
was endowed with all the attributes of an orator. 
First of all a magnificent presence, then vigorous in- 
tellect with strong convictions completed his capac- 
ity for eloquence. The speech Mr. Breckinridge 
delivered on the night of Baker's memorable reply 
was a masterpiece of diction and replete with the 
fire of Southern oratory. 

The old South of antebellum days typified the 
very embodiment of its ardent character in the per- 
son of John C. Breckinridge. Of the great debate 
in which he was about to participate, a Senator who 
was present said it was one of the most eloquent 
discussions that ever took place in legislative halls. 
"The cross-fire was full of scathing criticism and 
innuendo and the Senate sat spellbound for hours. 
We sat with breathless anxiety, when the clear 
voice of Breckinridge rang out *Mr. President,' for 
he was recognized as an intrepid leader and formida- 
ble debater." His opening sentence at once ar- 
rested the attention of the galleries. It was a 
unique spectacle — the occurrences of that fateful 
night. The Southern Senators had retired some 
months before and Breckinridge stood alone, almost 
without a senatorial sympathizer to bestow upon 
him a nod or glance of favor. It was in this cele- 
brated speech that Breckinridge threw out the ulti- 
matum to his State and boldly proclaimed his pur- 
pose to cast his destiny and seal his fortunes with 
the Rebellion. 

"If the Commonwealth of Kentucky," he said, 
"instead of attempting to mediate in this unfortu- 
nate struggle shall throw her energies into the strife 



14 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

and approve the conduct and sustain the policy of 
the Federal Administration in what I believe to be a 
war of subjugation and annihilation, she may take 
her course. I am her son and will share her destiny, 
but she will be recognized by some other man on 
the floor of this Senate." 

It was a sorrowful valedictory and farewell this 
great man was tendering to his old associates, for all 
recognized that it carried a prophecy too soon to be 
realized. A few weeks after, we find Breckinridge 
in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, fighting 
the battles and enduring the hardships of the Con- 
federate Army. At the beginning of the delivery 
of this eloquent speech General Baker, fresh from 
the field of battle, in military dress, sword dangling 
at his side, entered the Senate Chamber and at 
once became a conspicuous and picturesque figure 
in the distinguished group of Senators surrounding 
the speaker. General Baker in this senatorial forum 
was to meet a foeman worthy of his steel. His 
speech is one of the most magnificent orations ever 
delivered in the halls of the American Congress. 
Clothed in the classic language of which he was 
master, it was at the same time vested and tinctured 
with scathing criticism. Breckinridge had declared 
in substance that when the Senator from Oregon 
had indulged in the language that stamped upon 
him the stigma of a traitor, he had flaunted an in- 
sult in his face. Baker, with that nobility of char- 
acter and speech that was ever present with him, 
made this reply : 

"Mr. President, I rose a few minutes ago to en- 
deavor to demonstrate to the Honorable Senator 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 15 

from Kentucky that all these imaginations of his as 
to the unconstitutional character of the provisions 
of this bill were baseless and idle. I think every 
member of the Senate must be convinced from the 
manner of his reply that that conviction is begin- 
ning to get into his own mind ; and I shall therefore 
leave him to settle the account with the people of 
Kentucky, about which he seems to have some pre- 
dictions which I trust, with great personal respect 
to him, may, different from his usual predictions, 
become prophecy after the first Monday of August 
next." 

When we recall all that took place on that night 
we see some meaning in what the great delineator 
of hearts said, that "all the world's a stage," and if 
we paraphrase, the men players. How well those 
men played their part! What a sad memorial we 
have to place on the finality of their work! Each 
represented opposite lines of thought and each was 
ready to die for his convictions. This night closed 
their legislative career, for soon after Baker sealed 
his convictions with his blood, while Breckinridge, 
after a fitful career in the Confederate cause, went 
into retirement. 

One of the last utterances of Mr. Breckinridge in 
the Senate was : "My opinions are my own. I am 
not a man to cling to the forms of office and to the 
emoluments of public life against my convictions 
and my principles." His subsequent action sus- 
tained this declaration. He was a brave man. 



THE GREAT DEBATE 

Between Gen. E. D. Baker and John C. Breck- 
inridge OF Kentucky, with an Outline of 
the Preliminary Discussion 



The Senate was called to order by the President 
pro tempore Thursday, August first, 1861. 

Routine business was laid aside and on the motion 
of Senator Trumbull of Illinois, the Senate pro- 
ceeded to the consideration of Senate Bill No. 33, 
which bill enacted — 

"That any military commander in any district 
declared to be in a state of insurrection and war, 
may cause any person suspected of disloyalty to the 
Government of the United States to be brought be- 
fore him and may administer or cause to be admin- 
istered to such person an oath of allegiance as 
follows : 

" * I do solemnly swear that I will support, pro- 
tect, and defend the Constitution and Government 
of the United States against all enemies whether 
domestic or foreign, and that I will bear true faith 
and loyalty to the same, any ordinance or resolution 
of any State convention or legislature to the con- 
trary notwithstanding. I do this with a full deter- 

16 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE !•] 

mination and pledge, without any mental reservation 
or evasion whatever, so help me God.' 

"Refusing to take such oath they shall be detained 
as prisoners until the restoration of quiet and peace 
in the locality where such arrests may have been 
made." 

Mr. Bayard briefly addressed the Senate, declar- 
ing that the exigencies existing did not demand the 
enactment of such a law, saying : 

"I think it involves very grave constitutional 
questions. If we are at war there is no doubt that 
the rights and usages of war belong to and apply to 
the war, without any bill passed on our part. That 
arises under the laws of nations and not under 
special legislation. I believe myself that we are 
at war. Nothing like this bill has ever been at- 
tempted before." 

Senator Harris briefly stated that the features of 
the bill were novel, contemplating a state of things 
which was never before contemplated in this coun- 
try. He said : 

"Our Constitution was framed with no reference 
to such a state of things. We have a state of civil 
war. Here is a belt of country lying along the Vir- 
ginia side of the Potomac in a perfect state of an- 
archy. Civil authority has disappeared ; civil gov- 
ernment no longer exists ; crime is committed with 
impunity. What shall be done? I am credibly 
informed that, without process, arrests for high 
crime have been made and that now the jail at Alex- 
andria is nearly filled with prisoners who have been 
committed on military authority without civil pro- 
cess. * * * If our Army shall progress south- 



i8 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

ward, as I trust in God it will, there will be not only 
a belt of country along the borders of the Potomac, 
but we shall have the whole State of Virginia, and I 
hope still more territory which will be embraced 
within the considerations which the bill involves." 

Senator Lyman Trumbull made these observa- 
tions on the bill : 

"Mr. President, I do not wish to detain the Senate 
or to press pertinaciously upon its consideration this 
bill. If a bill of this character is needed its neces- 
sity grows out of the emergencies of our condition, 
the anomalous state of affairs in the country. Now, 
sir, what do we find ? The Senator from Kentucky 
thinks that this bill allows the military authority 
great power to arrest men. Are they not arrested 
now? Are not men arrested in the city of Balti- 
more and already in confinement and sent from 
Baltimore to other places to be confined? Are they 
not arrested in my State? Before I left home the 
military authorities in Illinois had arrested persons 
charged with treason. One of the very men cap- 
tured in Camp Jackson in the State of Missouri 
with arms in his hands was discharged in the State 
of Illinois on a writ of habeas corpus, by the judge 
of our court. 

"Mr. President and Senators, there is, in my 
judgment, resting upon us as heavy and as high a 
responsibility as was ever devolved upon men at any 
time in the history of the world. The existence of 
constitutional government is at stake. A Constitu- 
tion devised, perhaps, by the wisest men who ever 
undertook to frame a government is threatened 
seriously with overthrow. An attempt is now made 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE ig 

to disrupt the Government. * * * We are en- 
gaged in a civil war and I believe we have voted to 
raise $500,000,000, to raise five hundred thousand 
volunteers to fight to maintain this Constitution. I 
oppose the postponement of the bill. Can it be pos- 
sible that Senators of the United States in their 
hurry to get home for their personal convenience, 
when our brothers and our children are sleeping 
upon the ground, when we are taxing the people to 
their utmost capacity and when the blood of our 
citizens is to be poured out to sustain this Govern- 
ment, can Senators justify it to themselves to go 
away without maturing the bill ?" 

Senator Saulsbury advised the postponement of 
the bill because he believed, as he stated, every sec- 
tion of the bill to be violative of the Constitution of 
the United States. He said : 

"I believe it is, in fact, making a dictator of the 
President of the United States, and that if it passes 
there will not be, in fact, a free citizen in the United 
States. Why, sir, if this bill passes the President 
of the United States can declare my State in rebel- 
lion tomorrow; he can declare the State of New 
York or any State in rebellion tomorrow; all that 
has to be done is for the military commander to 
make proclamation thereof and he can arraign be- 
fore a court martial any citizen of the United States 
and subject him to trial by court martial instead of 
allowing him to be tried according to the law of the 
land. Sir, I have regarded this from its first intro- 
duction the most dangerous bill that was ever in- 
troduced, not only in this body, but into any legis- 
lative body of which I have had any knowledge that 



20 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

has ever existed on the face of the earth. I think it 
clothes the President of the United States, if possi- 
ble, with greater power than any dictator was ever 
clothed with in any period of Roman history." 

Mr. Doolittle said : 

"Mr. President, in the heat and excitement of this 
debate there are one or two ideas that ought not to 
be lost sight of. I refer to this talk about subjuga- 
tion, and I hope that my friends on this side of the 
Chamber will not lose sight of it in the excitement 
of debate. I undertake to say that it is not the pur- 
pose of this war, or of this Administration, to sub- 
jugate any State of the Union or the people of any 
State of the Union. What is the policy ? It is, as 
I said the other day, to enable the loyal people of the 
several States of this Union to reconstruct them- 
selves upon the Constitution of the United States. 
Virginia has led the way ; Virginia, in her sovereign 
capacity, by the assembled loyal people of that State 
in convention, has organized herself upon the Con- 
stitution of the United States and they have taken 
into their own hands the government of that 
State. * * * 

"Mr. President, I have heard a Senator denounce 
the President of the United States for the use of 
constitutional power. I undertake to say that with- 
out any foundation he makes such a charge of 
usurpation of unconstitutional power, unless it be 
in a mere matter of form. He has not, in substance ; 
and the case I put to the Senator the other day he 
has not answered and I defy him to answer. I 
undertake to say that as there are fifty thousand 
men, perhaps, in arms against the United States in 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 21 

Virginia within thirty miles of this Capital, I, as an 
individual, though I am not President, though I am 
clothed with no official authority, may ask one hun- 
dred thousand of my fellow-men to go with me with 
arms in our hands to take every one of them and if 
it be necessary to take their lives. Why do not 
some of these gentlemen who talk about usurpation 
and trampling the Constitution under foot, stand up 
here and answer that position or forever shut their 
mouths? * * * Away then, with all this stuff 
and this splitting of hairs and pettifogging here, 
when we are within the very sound of the guns and 
of the armies who threaten to march upon the Capi- 
tal and subjugate the Government." 

At this stage of the discussion the Vice-President 
announced that the Senator from Kentucky was en- 
titled to the floor. 

THE GREAT DEBATE. 

Mr. Breckinridge. " I do not know how the 
Senate may vote upon this question; and I have 
heard some remarks which have dropped from cer- 
tain Senators which have struck me with so much 
surprise, that I desire to say a few words in reply 
to them now. 

"This drama, sir, is beginning to open before us, 
and we begin to catch some idea of its magnitude. 
Appalled by the extent of it, and embarrassed by 
what they see before them and around them, the 
Senators who are themselves the most vehement 
in urging on this course of events, are beginning 
to quarrel among themselves as to the precise way 
in which to regulate it. 



22 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"The Senator from Vermont objects to this bill 
because it puts a limitation on what he considers 
already existing powers on the part of the Presi- 
dent. I wish to say a few words presently in re- 
gard to some provisions of this bill, and then the 
Senate and the country may judge of the extent 
of those powers of which this bill is a limitation. 

"I endeavored, Mr. President, to demonstrate a 
short time ago, that the whole tendency of our pro- 
ceedings was to trample the Constitution under our 
feet, and to conduct this contest without the slightest 
regard to its provisions. Everything that has oc- 
curred since, demonstrates that the view I took of 
the conduct and tendency of public affairs was cor- 
rect. Already both Houses of Congress have 
passed a bill virtually to confiscate all the property 
in the States that have withdrawn, declaring in the 
bill to which I refer that all property of every de- 
scription employed in any way to promote or aid in 
the insurrection, as it is denominated, shall be for- 
feited and confiscated. I need not say to you, sir, 
that all property of every kind is employed in those 
States, directly or indirectly, in aid of the contest 
they are waging, and consequently that bill is a 
general confiscation of all property there. 

"As if afraid, however, that this general term 
might not apply to slave property, it adds an addi- 
tional section. Although they were covered by the 
first section of the bill, to make sure of that, how- 
ever, it adds another section, declaring that all per- 
sons held to service or labor, who shall be employed 
in any way to aid or promote the contest now wag- 
ing, shall be discharged from such service and be- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 23 

come free. Nothing ca« be more apparent than 
that that is a general act of emancipation; because 
all the slaves in that country are employed in fur- 
nishing the means of subsistence and life to those 
who are prosecuting the contest; and it is an indi- 
rect but perfectly certain mode of carrying out the 
purposes contained in the bill introduced by the 
Senator from Kansas [Mr. Pomeroy]. It is doing 
under cover and by indirection, but certainly, what 
he proposes shall be done by direct proclamation of 
the President. 

"Again, sir: to show that all these proceedings 
are characterized by an utter disregard of the Fed- 
eral Constitution, what is happening around us 
every day ? In the State of New York, some young 
man has been imprisoned by executive authority 
upon no distinct charge, and the military officer 
having him in charge refused to obey the writ of 
habeas corpus issued by a judge. What is the color 
of excuse for that action in the State of New York ? 
As a Senator said, is New York in resistance to the 
Government? Is there any danger to the stability 
of the Government there? Then, sir, what reason 
will any Senator rise and give on this floor for the 
refusal to give to the civil authorities the body of a 
man taken by a military commander in the State 
of New York? 

"Again : the police commissioners of Baltimore 
were arrested by military authority without any 
charges whatever. In vain they have asked for a 
specification. In vain they have sent a respectful 
protest to the Congress of the United States. In 
vain the House of Representatives, by resolution, 



24 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

requested the President to furnish the representa- 
tives of the people with the grounds of their arrest. 
He answers the House of Representatives that, in 
his judgment, the public interest does not permit him 
to say why they were arrested, on what charges, or 
what he has done with them — and you call this lib- 
erty and law and proceedings for the preservation 
of the Constitution! They have been spirited off 
from one fortress to another, their locality unknown, 
and the President of the United States refuses, upon 
the application of the most numerous branch of the 
National Legislature, to furnish them with the 
grounds of their arrest, or to inform them what he 
has done with them. 

"Sir, it was said the other day by the Senator 
from Illinois [Mr. Browning] that I had assailed 
the conduct of the Executive with vehemence, if 
not with malignity, I am not aware that I have 
done so. I criticised, with the freedom that belongs 
to the representative of a sovereign State and the 
people, the conduct of the Executive. I shall con- 
tinue to do so as long as I hold a seat upon this 
floor, when, in my opinion, that conduct deserves 
criticism. Sir, I need not say that, in the midst of 
such events as surround us, I could not cherish 
personal animosity towards any human being. 
Towards that distinguished officer, I never did cher- 
ish it. Upon the contrary, I think more highly of 
him, as a man and an officer, than I do of many who 
are around him and who, perhaps, guide his coun- 
sels, I deem him to be personally an honest man, 
and I believe that he is trampling upon the Consti- 
tution of his country every day, with probably good 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 25 

motives, under the counsels of those who influence 
him. But, sir, I have nothing now to say about 
the President. The proceedings of Congress have 
eclipsed the actions of the Executive; and if this bill 
shall become a law, the proceedings of the President 
will sink into absolute nothingness in the presence 
of the outrages upon personal and public liberty 
which have been perpetrated by the Congress of the 
United States. 

"The Senator from Vermont objects to the bill 
because it puts a limitation upon already existing 
powers. Sir, let us look for a moment at the pro- 
visions of this bill. I shall speak presently of the 
Senator's notions of the laws of war. The first 
section of the bill authorizes the President of the 
United States to declare any of the military dis- 
tricts in a state of insurrection or actual rebellion 
against the United States. Those military districts 
are composed of States and of parts of States. 
When the President shall so declare, and he is au- 
thorized to do it in his discretion — there may, or 
there may not, be insurrection or rebellion: the 
President may say there is, and no man shall chal- 
lenge his assertion — when that is done, the military 
commanders in those respective States or military 
districts shall give notice thereof, and what then 
follows ? It provides in the second section that any 
military commander in one of those States or dis- 
tricts shall make and publish such police rules and 
regulations, conforming as nearly as may be to pre- 
viously existing laws and regulations — not mere 
police rules and regulations, but just such rules and 
regulations as he may desire, conforming as nearly 



26 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

as he may choose, in his discretion, to the existing 
laws of the several States or military districts, * and 
all the civil authorities within said districts shall be 
bound to carry said rules and regulations into effect.' 
They are subordinated, at the discretion of the Presi- 
dent, to the dictation of any of his subordinate mili- 
tary commanders. 

"The third section provides : 

" 'That if, from any cause whatever, the said civil authorities 
fail to execute the said rules and regulations' — 

"So made by this subordinate military com- 
mander — 

" 'the said military commander shall cause them to be executed 
and enforced by the military force under his command.' 

"The fourth section authorizes, not the President, 
but any military commander in any of these dis- 
tricts, generals, colonels, majors, captains — if one 
of them should be the commander of a military dis- 
trict — in his discretion to suspend the writ of habeas 
corpus, and make return that he will not obey, to 
any judge that may issue it. 

"Then, sir, if any person — not a camp follower, 
not any one subject to the rules and articles of war 
— but if any person- — 

" 'Shall be found in arms against the United States, or other- 
wise aiding and abetting their enemies or opposers, within any 
district of country to which it relates, and shall be taken by 
the forces of the United States, shall be either detained as 
prisoners for trial on the charge of treason or sedition, or 
other crimes and offenses which they may have committed 
whilst resisting the authority of the United States; or may, 
according to the circumstances of the case' — 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 27 

"This to be judged of by this miUtary com- 
mander — 

" 'be at once placed before a court martial, to be dealt with 
according to the rules of war in respect to unorganized and 
lawless armed bands, not recognized as regular troops.' 

"Or in his discretion may be discharged upon 
parole. The Constitution of the United States de- 
clares that the crime of treason and all other crimes 
shall be tried by a jury, and not by a military com- 
mander, or a drum-head court martial. The power 
to suspend the habeas corpus which Congress may 
do by the Constitution, but cannot delegate to the 
President, or any one else, it is proposed by this bill 
to authorize the President to delegate to any subor- 
dinate military authority — a power which he does 
not himself possess. 

"The sixth section provides that — 

" 'No sentence of death pronounced by a court martial upon 
any person or persons taken in arms as aforesaid, shall be 
executed before it has been submitted to the commander of 
the military department within which the conviction has taken 
place, or to the Commanding General of the Army of the 
United States.' 

"Sentence of death may be passed upon any per- 
son under these circumstances, with the approval 
either of the General-in-Chief of the Army or of the 
subordinate military commander who may have the 
control of the district in which he is taken. 

"Sir, I do not at present comment upon the sev- 
enth section, in regard to persons put upon parole; 
nor the eighth section, which provides that any mili- 
tary commander may cause any person suspected 
of disloyalty to the United States to be brought 



28 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

before him, and may administer, or cause to be ad- 
ministered, to such person an oath of allegiance — a 
very peculiar oath — an oath not alone to support the 
Constitution of the United States, but to bear true 
allegiance to many other things not provided for in 
the Constitution of the United States. There is no 
legitimate oath which can be put upon any one ex- 
cept an officer under the Government, and that oath 
is limited to a support of the Constitution of the 
United States ; and I think the public liberties are at 
a low ebb when any military commander may seize, 
throughout the length and breadth of the land, any 
citizen suspected merely, and compel him to take 
such an oath as is prescribed by this bill. 

"Then, Mr. President, without discussing the 
other points at present, how does it sum up? Let 
me take the State of Kentucky, for example. That 
State is a military district. Suppose that, for any 
cause, the President may choose to say that that 
State is in a condition of insurrection or rebellion — 
though she has suffered enough from violations of 
the Constitution committed by the Executive; al- 
though she has been clinging with her characteristic 
fidelity to the Union of the States — he is to be the 
sole judge of the facts; he is to declare that Ken- 
tucky, for example, is in a state of insurrection or 
rebellion. What follows? The military com- 
mander in charge of the United States forces in the 
district may then publish just such rules and regu- 
lations for the government of that Commonwealth 
as he may choose, making them conform as nearly 
as he may, in his discretion, to the existing laws of 
the State; and the civil authorities of that State are 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 29 

to be bound by the rules and regulations of this mili- 
tary commander, and if they do not execute them, 
he is then to see that they are executed by the mili- 
tary force under his command. 

"What is it, sir, but vesting first in the discretion 
of the President, to be by him detailed to a sub- 
altern military commander, the authority to enter 
the Commonwealth of Kentucky, to abolish the 
State, to abolish the Executive, the Legislature, and 
the judiciary, and to substitute just such rules for 
the government of its people as that military com- 
mander may choose ? Well might the Senator from 
Delaware [Mr. Saulsbury] say that this bill con- 
tains provisions conferring authority which never 
was exercised in the worst days of Rome, by the 
worst of her dictators. I have wondered why the 
bill was introduced. I have sometimes thought that 
possibly it was introduced for the purpose of pre- 
venting the expression of that reaction which is now 
evidently going on in the public mind against these 
procedures so fatal to constitutional liberty. The 
Army may be thus taxed, perhaps, to collect the enor- 
mous direct taxes for which preparation is now 
being made by Congress ; and if in any part of Illi- 
nois, or Indiana, or New York, or any State, North 
or South, there shall be difficulty, or resistance, the 
President in his discretion may declare it to be in a 
state of insurrection, all the civil authorities may be 
overthrown, and his military commander may make 
rules and regulations, collect taxes, and execute the 
laws at his pleasure. 

"Mr. President, gentlemen talk about the Union 
as if it was an end instead of a means. They talk 



30 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

about it as if it was the Union of these States which 
alone had brought into life the principles of public 
and of personal liberty. Sir, they existed before 
and they may survive it. Take care that in pursu- 
ing one idea you do not destroy not only the Con- 
stitution of your country, but sever what remains of 
the Federal Union. These eternal and sacred prin- 
ciples of public and of personal liberty, which lived 
before the Union and will live forever and ever 
somewhere, must be respected ; they cannot with im- 
punity be overthrown; and if you force the people 
to the issue between any form of government and 
these priceless principles, that form of government 
will perish ; they will tear it asunder as the irrepress- 
ible forces of nature rend whatever opposes them. 

"Mr, President, I shall not long detain the Senate. 
I shall not enter now upon an elaborate discussion of 
all the principles involved in this bill, and all the con- 
sequences which, in my opinion, flow from it. A 
word in regard to what fell from the Senator from 
Vermont, the substance of which has been uttered 
by a great many Senators on this floor. What I 
tried to show some time ago has been substantially 
admitted. One Senator says that the Constitution is 
put aside in a struggle like this. Another Senator 
says that the condition of affairs is altogether ab- 
normal, and that you cannot deal with them on con- 
stitutional principles, any more than you can deal by 
any of the regnlar operations of the laws of nature 
with an earthquake. The Senator from Vermont 
says that all these proceedings are to be conducted 
according to the laws of war ; and he adds that the 
laws of war require many things to be done which 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 31 

are absolutely forbidden in the Constitution; which 
Congress is prohibited from doing, and all other de- 
partments of the Government are forbidden from 
doing by the Constitution ; but that they are proper 
under the laws of war, which must alone be the 
measure of our action now. I desire the country, 
then, to know this fact; that it is openly avowed 
upon this floor that constitutional limitations are no 
longer to be regarded; but that you are acting just 
as if there were two nations upon this continent, 
one arrayed against the other; some eighteen or 
twenty million on one side, and some ten or twelve 
million on the other ; as to whom the Constitution is 
naught, and the laws of war alone apply. 

"Sir, let the people, already beginning to pause 
and reflect upon the origin and nature and the prob- 
able consequences of this unhappy strife, get this 
idea fairly lodged in their minds — and it is a true 
one — and I will venture to say that the brave words 
which we now hear every day about crushing, sub- 
jugating, treason, and traitors, will not be so uttered 
the next time the representatives of the people and 
the States assemble beneath the dome of this Cap- 
itol." 

Mr. Lane, of Kansas. "With the consent of the 
Senator from Kentucky, I should like to ask him a 
question." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "I prefer that the Senator 
from Kansas should not at present interrupt me. I 
shall soon close what I have to say, and then he will 
be entitled to the floor. 

"Then, sir, if the Constitution is really to be put 
aside, if the laws of war alone are to govern, and 



32 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

whatever may be done by one independent nation at 
war with another, is to be done, why not act upon 
that practically ? I do not hold that the clause of the 
Constitution which authorizes Congress to declare 
war, applies to any internal difficulties. I do not be- 
lieve it applies to any of the political communities, 
bound together under the Constitution, in political 
association. I regard it as applying to external ene- 
mies. Nor do I believe that the Constitution of the 
United States ever contemplated the preservation of 
the Union of these States by one-half the States 
warring on the other half. It details particularly 
how military force shall be employed in this Federal 
system of Government, and it can be employed 
properly in no other way ; it can be employed in aid 
of the civil tribunals. If there are no civil tribunals, 
if there is no mode by which the laws of the United 
States may be enforced in the manner prescribed by 
the Constitution, what follows? The remaining 
States may, if they choose, make war, but they do it 
outside of the Constitution ; and the Federal system, 
as determined by the principles and terms of that in- 
strument, does not provide for the case. It does 
provide for putting down insurrections, illegal up- 
risings of individuals, but it does not provide, in my 
opinion, either in its spirit or in its terms, for raising 
armies by one-half of the political communities that 
compose the Confederacy, for the purpose of subju- 
gating the other half ; and the very fact that it does 
not, is shown by the fact that you have to avow on 
the floor of the Senate the necessity for putting the 
Constitution aside, and conducting the whole contest 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 33 

without reg-ard to it, and in obedience solely to the 
laws of war. 

"Then, if we are at war, if it is a case of war, 
treat it like war. Practically, it is being treated like 
war. The prisoners whom the United States have 
taken are not hung as traitors. The prisoners which 
the other States have taken are not hung as traitors. 
It is war. The Senator is right in saying it is war ; 
but, in my opinion, it is not only an unhappy but an 
unconstitutional war. Why, then, all these proceed- 
ings upon the part of the Administration, refusing 
to send or to receive flags of truce ; refusing to rec- 
ognize the actual condition of affairs ; refusing to do 
those acts which, if they do not terminate, may at 
least ameliorate the unhappy condition in which we 
find ourselves placed ? 

"So much, then, we know. We know that ad- 
mitted violations of the Constitution have been 
made, and are justified. We know that we have 
conferred by legislation, and are, perhaps, still fur- 
ther by legislation to confer, authority to do acts not 
warranted by the Constitution of the United States. 
We have it openly avowed that the Constitution of 
the Union, which is the bond of association, at least, 
between those States that still adhere to the Federal 
Union, is no longer to be regarded. It is not enough 
to tell me that it has been violated by those com- 
munities that have seceded. Other States have not 
seceded ; Kentucky has not seceded ; Illinois has not 
seceded ; some twenty States yet compose the Fed- 
eral Union, nominally under this Constitution. As 
to them, that instrument, in its terms and in its 
spirit, is the bond of their connection under the Fed- 



34 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

eral system. They have a right, as between them- 
selves and their co-members of the Confederacy, to 
insist upon its being respected. If, indeed, it is to 
be put aside, and we are to go into a great conti- 
nental struggle, they may pause to inquire what is to 
become of their liberties, and what their political 
connections are to be in a contest made without con- 
stitutional warrant, and in derogation of all the 
terms of the instrument. How can this be success- 
fully controverted? Though you may have a right 
to trample under foot the Constitution, and to make 
war (as every power has a right to make war) 
against the States that have seceded, have you a 
right to violate it as to any of the adhering States, 
who insist upon fidelity to its provisions? No, sir. 

"Mr. President, we are on the wrong tack; we 
have been from the beginning. The people begin to 
see it. Here we have been hurling gallant fellows on 
to death, and the blood of Americans has been shed 
— for what? They have shown their prowess, re- 
spectively — that which belongs to the race — and 
shown it like men. But for what have the United 
States soldiers, according to the exposition we have 
heard here to-day, been shedding their blood, and 
displaying their dauntless courage? It has been to 
carry out principles that three-fourths of them ab- 
hor ; for the principles contained in this bill, and con- 
tinually avowed on the floor of the Senate, are not 
shared, I venture to say, by one-fourth of the Army. 

"I have said, sir, that we are on the wrong tack. 
Nothing but ruin, utter ruin, to the North, to the 
South, to the East, to the West, will follow the 
prosecution of this contest. You may look forward 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 35 

to innumerable armies ; you may look forward to 
countless treasures — all spent for the purpose of 
desolating and ravaging this continent; at the end 
leaving us just where we are now ; or if the forces 
of the United States are successful in ravaging the 
whole South, what on earth will be done with it 
after that is accomplished ? Are not gentlemen now 
perfectly satisfied that they have mistaken a people 
for a faction? Are they not perfectly satisfied that, 
to accomplish their object, it is necessary to subju- 
gate, to conquer — ay, to exterminate — nearly ten 
millions of people ? Do you not know it ? Does not 
everybody know it? Does not the world know it? 
Let us pause, and let the Congress of the United 
States respond to the rising feeling all over this land 
in favor of peace. War is separation ; in the lan- 
guage of an eminent gentleman now no more, it is 
disunion, eternal and final disunion. We have sep- 
aration now ; it is only made worse by war, and an 
utter extinction of all those sentiments of common 
interest and feeling which might lead to a political 
reunion founded uopn consent and upon a conviction 
of its advantages. Let the war go on, however, and 
soon, in addition to the moans of widows and or- 
phans all over this land, you will hear the cry of dis- 
tress from those who want food and the comforts of 
life. The people will be unable to pay the grinding 
taxes which a fanatical spirit will attempt to impose 
upon them. Nay, more, sir; you will see further 
separation. I hope it is not 'the sunset of life gives 
me mystical lore,' but in my mind's eye I plainly see 
'coming events cast their shadows before.' The 
Pacific slope now, doubtless, is devoted to the union 



36 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

of States. Let this war go on till they find the 
burdens of taxation greater than the burdens of a 
separate condition, and they will assert it. Let the 
war go on until they see the beautiful features of the 
old Confederacy beaten out of shape and comeliness 
by the brutalizing hand of war, and they will turn 
aside in disgust from the sickening spectacle, and 
become a separate nation. Fight twelve months 
longer, and the already opening differences that you 
see between New England and the great Northwest 
will develop themselves. You have two confeder- 
acies now. Fight twelve months, and you will have 
three ; twelve months longer, and you will have four. 

"I zvill not enlarge upon it, sir. I am quite aware 
that all I say is receizfcd zuith a sneer of incredulity 
by the gentlemen zvho represent the far Northeast; 
hut let the future determine zvho zvas right and zvho 
zuas zvrong. We are making our record here; I, my 
humble one, amid the sneers and aversion of nearly 
all zvho surround me, giving my votes and uttering 
my utterances according to my convictions, zvith but 
fezv approving voices, and surrounded by scozvls. 
The time zvill soon come, Senators, zvhen history 
zvill put her final seal upon these proceedings, and if 
my name shall be recorded there, going along zvith 
yours as an actor in these scenes, I am zvilling to 
abide, fearlessly, her final judgment." 

At this juncture Senator Baker, who had been 
following the Kentucky Senator and making notes 
as he proceeded in his speech, was recognized by the 
Vice-President and immediately proceeded with this 
eloquent reply : 

Mr. Baker. "Mr. President, it has not been my 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 37 

fortune to participate in at any length, indeed, not to 
hear very much of, the discussion which has been 
going on — more, I think, in the hands of the Sen- 
ator from Kentucky than anybody else — upon all the 
propositions connected with this war; and, as I 
really feel as sincerely as he can an earnest desire to 
preserve the Constitution of the United States for 
everybody. South as well as North, I have listened 
for some little time past to what he has said with an 
earnest desire to apprehend the point of his objection 
to this particular bill. And now — waiving what I 
think is the elegant but loose declamation in which 
Jw chooses to indulge — / would propose^ with my 
habitual respect for him (for nobody is more 
courteous and more gentlemanly), to ask him if he 
will be kind enough to tell me what single particular 
provision there is in this bill which is in violation of 
the Constitution of the United States, which I have 
sworn to support — one distinct, single proposition in 
the bill." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "I will state, in general 
terms, that every one of them is, in my opinion, 
flagrantly so, unless it may be the last. I will send 
the Senator the bill, and he may comment on the 
sections." 

Mr. Baker. "Pick out that one which is in your 
judgment most clearly so." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "They are all, in my opin- 
ion, so equally atrocious that I dislike to discrimi- 
nate. I will send the Senator the bill, and I tell him 
that every section, except the last, in my opinion, 
violates the Constitution of the United States; and 
of that last section, I express no opinion." 



38 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Mr. Baker. "I had hoped that that respectful 
suggestion to the Senator would enable him to point 
out to me one, in his judgment, most clearly so, for 
they are not all alike — they are not equally atro- 
cious." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "Very nearly. There are 
ten of them. The Senator can select which he 
pleases." 

Mr. Baker. "Let me try then, if I must gener- 
alize as the Senator does, to see if I can get the scope 
and meaning of this bill. It is a bill providing that 
the President of the United States may declare, by 
proclamation, in a certain given statement of fact, 
certain territory within the United States to be in a 
condition of insurrection and war ; which proclama- 
tion shall be extensively published within the district 
to which it relates. That is the first proposition. I 
ask him if that is unconstitutional ? That is a' plain 
question. Is it unconstitutional to give power to the 
President to declare a portion of the territory of the 
United States in a state of insurrection or rebellion ? 
He will not dare to say it is." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "Mr. President, the Sen- 
ator from Oregon is a very adroit debater, and he 
discovers, of course, the great advantage he would 
have if I were to allow him, occupying the floor, to 
ask me a series of questions, and then have his own 
criticisms made on them. When he has closed his 
speech, if I deem it necessary, I may make some re- 
ply. At present, however, I will answer that ques- 
tion. The State of Illinois, I believe, is a military 
district ; the State of Kentucky is a military district. 
In my judgment. Congress has no right to confer 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 39 

upon the President authority to declare a State in a 
condition of insurrection or rebellion." 

Mr. Baker. **In the first place, the bill does not 
say a word about States. That is the first answer." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "Does not the Senator 
know, in fact, that those States compose military 
districts? It might as well have said 'States' as to 
describe what is a State." 

Mr. Baker. "I do ; and that is the reason why I 
suggest to the honorable Senator that this criticism 
about States does not mean anything at all. That is 
the very point. The objection certainly ought not to 
be that he can declare a part of a State in insurrec- 
tion and not the whole of it. In point of fact, the 
Constitution of the United States, and the Congress 
of the United States acting upon it, are not treating 
of States, but of the territory comprising the United 
States; and I submit once more to his better judg- 
ment that it cannot be unconstitutional to allow the 
President to declare a county or a part of a county, 
or a town or a part of a town, or part of a State, or 
the whole of a State, or two States, or five States, in 
a condition of insurrection, if in his judgment that 
be the fact. That is not wrong. 

"In the next place, it provides that, that being so, 
the military commander in that district may make 
and publish such police rules and regulations as he 
may deem necessary to suppress the rebellion and 
restore order and preserve the lives and property of 
citizens. I submit to him, if the President of the 
United States has power, or ought to have power, to 
suppress insurrection and rebellion, is there any bet- 
ter way to do it, or is there any other ? The gentle- 



40 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

man says, do it by the civil power. Look at the 
fact. The civil power is utterly overwhelmed; the 
courts are closed ; the judges banished. Is the Presi- 
dent not to execute the law ? Is he to do it in per- 
son, or by his military commanders ? Are they to do 
it with regulation, or without it? That is the only 
question. 

"Mr. President, the honorable Senator says there 
is a state of war. The Senator from Vermont 
agrees with him ; or rather, he agrees with the Sen- 
ator from Vermont in that. What then? There is 
a state of public war ; none the less war because it is 
urged from the other side; not the less war because 
it is unjust ; not the less war because it is a war of 
insurrection and rebellion. It is still war; and I am 
willing to say it is public war — public as contradis- 
tinguished from private war. When then? Shall 
we carry that war on? Is it his duty as a Senator 
to carry it on? If so, how? By armies, under com- 
mand ; by military organization and authority, ad- 
vancing to suppress insurrection and rebellion. Is 
that unconstitutional? Are we not bound to do, 
with whoever levies war against us, as we would do 
if he was a foreigner ? There is no distinction as to 
the mode of carrying on war ; we carry on war 
against an advancing army just the same, whether it 
be from Russia or from South Carolina. Will the 
honorable Senator tell me it is our duty to stay here, 
within fifteen miles of the enemy seeking to advance 
upon us every hour, and talk about nice questions of 
constitutional construction as to whether it is war or 
merely insurrection ? No, sir. It is our duty to ad- 
vance, if we can ; to suppress insurrection ; to put 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 41 

down rebellion; to dissipate the rising; to scatter the 
enemy, and when we have done so, to preserve, in 
the terms of the bill, the liberty, lives, and property 
of the people of the country, by just and fair police 
regulations, I ask the Senator from Indiana [Mr. 
Lane], when we took Monterey, did we not do it 
there? When we took Mexico, did we not do it 
there ? Is it not a part, a necessary, an indispensable 
part of war itself, that there shall be military regula- 
tions over the country conquered and held ? Is that 
unconstitutional ? 

"I think it was a mere play of words that the Sen- 
ator indulged in when he attempted to answer the 
Senator from New York. I did not understand the 
Senator from New York to mean anything else sub- 
stantially but this, that the Constitution deals gen- 
erally with a state of peace, and that when war is de- 
clared it leaves the condition of public affairs to be 
determined by the laws of war, in the country where 
the war exists. It is true that the Constitution of 
the United States does adopt the laws of war as a 
part of the instrument itself, during the continuance 
of war. The Constitution does not provide that 
spies shall be hung. Is it unconstitutional to hang a 
spy? There is no provision for it in terms in the 
Constitution; but nobody denies the right, the pow- 
er, the justice. Why ? Because it is part of the law 
of war. The Constitution does not provide for the 
exchange of prisoners ; yet it may be done under the 
law of war. Indeed the Constitution does not pro- 
vide that a prisoner may be taken at all ; yet his cap- 
tivity is perfectly just and constitutional. It seems 



42 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

to me that the Senator does not, will not, take that 
view of the subject. 

"Again, sir, when a military commander ad- 
vances, as I trust, if there are no more unexpected 
great reverses, he will advance, through Virginia 
and occupies the country, there, perhaps, as here, the 
civil law may be silent; there perhaps the civil offi- 
cers may flee as ours have been compelled to fiee. 
What then ? If the civil law is silent, who shall con- 
trol and regulate the conquered district — who but 
the military commander? As the Senator from Il- 
linois has well said, shall it be done by regulation or 
without regulation? Shall the general, or the col- 
onel, or the captain, be supreme, or shall he be regu- 
lated and ordered by the President of the United 
States ? That is the sole question. The Senator has 
put it well. 

"I agree that we ought to do all we can to limit, 
to restrain, to fetter the abuse of military power. 
Bayonets are at best illogical arguments. I am not 
willing, except as a case of sheerest necessity, ever 
to permit a military commander to exercise author- 
ity over life, liberty, and property. But, sir, it is 
part of the law of war ; you cannot carry in the rear 
of your army your courts; you cannot organize 
juries ; you cannot have trials according to the forms 
and ceremonial of the common law amid the clangor 
of arms, and somebody must enforce police regula- 
tions in a conquered or occupied district. I ask the 
Senator from Kentucky again respectfully, is that 
unconstitutional ; or, if in the nature of war it must 
exist, even if there be no law passed by us to allow 
it, is it unconstitutional to regulate it? That is the 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 43 

question, to which I do not think he will make a 
clear and distinct reply. 

"Now, sir, I have shown him two sections of the 
bill which I do not think he will repeat earnesti}' are 
unconstitutional. I do not think that he will seri- 
ously deny that it is perfectly constitutional to lim- 
it, to regulate, to control, at the same time to confer 
and restrain authority in the hands of military com- 
manders. I think it is wise and judicious to regulate 
it by virtue of powers to be placed in the hands of 
the President by law. 

"Now, a few words, and a few only, as to the 
Senator's predictions. The Senator from Kentucky 
stands up here in a manly way in opposition to what 
he sees is the overwhelming sentiment of the Sen- 
ate, and utters reproof, malediction, and prediction 
combined. Well, sir, it is not every prediction that 
is prophecy. It is the easiest thing in the world to 
do; there is nothing easier, except to be mistaken 
when we have predicted. I confess, Mr. President, 
that I would not have predicted three weeks ago the 
disasters which have overtaken our arms; and I do 
not think (if I were to predict now) that six months 
hence the Senator will indulge in the same tone of 
prediction which is his favorite key now. I would 
ask him what would you have us do now — a Confed- 
erate army within twenty miles of us, advancing, or 
threatening to advance, to overwhelm your Govern- 
ment; to shake the pillars of the Union; to bring it 
around your head, if you stay here, in ruins? Are 
we to stop and talk about an uprising sentiment in 
the North against the war? Are we to predict evil, 
and retire from what we predict ? Is it not the man- 



44 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

ly part to go on as we have begun, to raise money, 
and levy armies, to organize them, to prepare to ad- 
vance; when we do advance, to regulate that ad- 
vance by all the laws and regulations that civiliza- 
tion and humanity will allow in time of battle ? Can 
we do anything more? To talk to us about stop- 
ping, is idle; we will never stop. Will the Senator 
yield to rebellion? Will he shrink from armed in- 
surrection? Will his State justify it? Will its bet- 
ter public opinion allow it ? Shall we send a flag of 
truce? What would he have? Or would he conduct 
this war so feebly, that the whole world would smile 
at us in derision? What would he have? These 
speeches of his, sown broadcast over the land, what 
clear distinct meaning have they? Are they not in- 
tended for disorganization in our very midst? Are 
they not intended to dull our weapons? Are they 
not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not in- 
tended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not 
words of brilliant, polished treason, even in the very 
Capitol of the Confederacyf" [Manifestations of 
applause in the galleries.] 

The Presiding Officer (Mr. Anthony in the 
chair). "Order." 

Mr. Baker. "What would have been thought 
if, in another Capitol, in another Republic, in a yet 
more martial age, a Senator as grave, not more elo- 
quent or dignified than the Senator from Kentucky, 
yet with the Roman purple flowing over his shoul- 
ders, had risen in his place, surrounded by all the il- 
lustrations of Roman glory, and declared that ad- 
vancing Hannibal was just, and that Carthage ought 
to be dealt with in terms of peace? What would 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 45 

have been thought if, after the battle of Cannae, a 
Senator there had risen in his place and denounced 
every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure 
of its treasure, and every appeal to the old recollec- 
tions and the old glories? Sir, a Senator, himself 
learned far more than myself in such lore [Mr. Fes- 
senden], tells me, in a voice that I am glad is aud- 
ible, that he would have been hurled from the Tar- 
peian rock. It is a grand commentary upon the 
American Constitution that we permit these words 
to be uttered. I ask the Senator to recollect, too, 
what, save to send aid and comfort to the enemy, do 
these predictions of his amount to? Every word 
thus uttered falls as a note of inspiration upon every 
Confederate ear. Every sound thus uttered is a word 
(and falling from his lips, a mighty word) of kin- 
dling and triumph to a foe that determines to ad- 
vance. For me, I have no such word as a Senator 
to utter. For me, amid temporary defeat, disaster, 
disgrace, it seems that my duty calls me to utter an- 
other word, and that word is, bold, sudden, forward, 
determined war, according to the laws of war, by 
armies, by military commanders clothed with full 
power, advancing with all the past glories of the Re- 
public urging them on to conquest. 

"I do not stop to consider whether it is subjuga- 
tion or not. It is compulsory obedience, not to my 
will ; not to yours, sir ; not to the will of any one 
man ; not to the will of any one State ; but compul- 
sory obedience to the Constitution of the whole 
country. The Senator chose the other day again 
and again to animadvert on a single expression in a 
little speech which I delivered before the Senate, in 



46 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

which I took occasion to say that if the people of the 
rebellious States would not govern themselves as 
States, they ought to be governed as Territories. 
The Senator knew full well then, for I explained it 
twice — he knows full well now — that on this side of 
the Chamber; nay, in this whole Chamber; nay, in 
this whole North and West; nay, in all the loyal 
States in all their breadth, there is not a man among 
us all who dreams of causing any man in the South 
to submit to any rule, either as to life, liberty, or 
property, that we ourselves do not willingly agree 
to yield to. Did he ever think of that? Subjuga- 
tion for what? When we subjugate South Carolina, 
what shall we do ? We shall compel its obedience to 
the Constitution of the United States; that is all. 
Why play upon words? We do not mean, we have 
never said, any more. If it be slavery that men 
should obey the Constitution their fathers fought 
for, let it be so. If it be freedom, it is freedom 
equally for them and for us. We propose to subju- 
gate rebellion into loyalty ; we propose to subjugate 
insurrection into peace; we propose to subjugate 
Confederate anarchy into constitutional Union lib- 
erty. The Senator well knows that we propose no 
more. I ask him, I appeal to his better judgment 
now, what does he imagine we intend to do, if for- 
tunately we conquer Tennessee or South Carolina — 
call it 'conquer,' if you will, sir — what do we propose 
to do ? They will have their courts still ; they will 
have their ballot-boxes still ; they will have their elec- 
tions still ; they will have their representatives upon 
this floor still ; they will have taxation and repre- 
sentation still; they will have the writ of habeas 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 47 

corpus still ; they will have every privilege they ever 
had and all we desire. When the Confederate 
armies are scattered ; when their leaders are ban- 
ished from power; when the people return to a late 
repentant sense of the wrong they have done to a 
Government they never felt but in benignancy and 
blessing, then the Constitution made for all will be 
felt by all, like the descending rains from heaven 
which bless all alike. Is that subjugation? To re- 
store what was, as it was, for the benefit of the 
whole country and of the whole human race, is all 
we desire and all we can have. 

"Gentlemen talk about the Northeast. I appeal 
to Senators from the Northeast, is there a man in all 
your States who advances upon the South with any 
other idea but to restore the Constitution of the 
United States in its spirit and its unity? I never 
heard that one. I believe no man indulges in any 
dream of inflicting there any wrong to public lib- 
erty; and I respectfully tell the Senator from Ken- 
tucky that he persistently, earnestly, I will not say 
wilfully, misrepresents the sentiment of the North 
and West when he attempts to teach these doctrines 
to the Confederates of the South. 

"Sir, while I am predicting, I will tell you an- 
other thing. This threat about money and men 
amounts to nothing. Some of the States which have 
been named in that connection, I know well. I 
know, as my friend from Illinois will bear me wit- 
ness, his own State, very well. I am sure that no 
temporary defeat, no momentary disaster, will 
swerve that State either from its allegiance to the 
Union, or from its determination to preserve it. It 



48 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

is not with us a question of money or of blood ; it is 
a question involving considerations higher than 
these. When the Senator from Kentucky speaks of 
the Pacific, I see another distinguished friend from 
Illinois, now worthily representing one of the States 
on the Pacific [Mr. McDougall], who will bear me 
witness that I know that State too, well. I take the 
liberty — I know I but utter his sentiments in ad- 
vance — of joining with him, to say that that State, 
quoting from the passage the gentleman himself has 
quoted, will be true to the Union to the last of her 
blood and her treasure. There may be there some 
disaffected; there may be some few men there who 
would 'rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.' 
There are such men everywhere. There are a few 
men there who have left the South for the good of 
the South ; who are perverse, violent, destructive, 
revolutionary, and opposed to social order. A few, 
but a very few, thus formed and thus nurtured, in 
California and in Oregon, both persistently endeav- 
oring to create and maintain mischief ; but the great 
portion of our population are loyal to the core and in 
every chord of their hearts. They are offering 
through me — more to their own Senators every day 
from California, and indeed from Oregon — to add 
to the legions of this country, by the hundred and 
the thousand. They are willing to come thousands 
of miles with their arms on their shoulders, at their 
own expense, to share with the best offering of their 
heart's blood in the great struggle of constitutional 
liberty. I tell the Senator that his predictions, some- 
times for the South, sometimes for the Middle 
States, sometimes for the Northeast, and then wan- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 49 

dering away in airy visions out to the far Pacific, 
about the dread of our people, as for loss of blood 
and treasure, provoking them to disloyalty, are false 
in sentiment, false in fact, and false in loyalty. The 
Senator from Kentucky is mistaken in them all. 
Five hundred million dollars? What then? Great 
Britain gave more than two thousand million in the 
great battle for constitutional liberty which she led 
at one time almost single-handed against the world. 
Five hundred thousand men! What then? We 
have them; they are ours; they are the children of 
the country. They belong to the whole country; 
they are our sons ; our kinsmen ; and there are many 
of us who will give them all up before we will abate 
one word of our just demand, or will retreat one 
inch from the line which divides right from wrong. 
"Sir, it is not a question of men or of money in 
that sense. All the money, all the men, are, in our 
judgment, well bestowed in such a cause. When we 
give them, we know their value. Knowing their 
value well, we give them with the more pride and 
the more joy. Sir. how can we retreat? Sir. how 
can we make peace? Who shall treat? What com- 
missioners? Who would go? Upon what terms? 
Where is to be your boundary line? Where the end 
of the principles we shall have to give up? What 
will become of constitutional government? What 
will become of public liberty? What of past glories? 
What of future hopes? Shall we sink into the in- 
significance of the grave — a degraded, defeated, 
emasculated people, frightened by the results of one 
battle, and scared at the visions raised by the imag- 
ination of the Senator from Kentucky upon this 



50 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

floor ? No, sir ; a thousand times, no, sir ! We will 
rally — if, indeed, our words be necessary — we will 
rally the people, the loyal people, of the whole 
country. They will pour forth their treasure, their 
money, their men, without stint, without measure. 
The most peaceable man in this body may stamp his 
foot upon this Senate Chamber floor, as of old a 
warrior and a Senator did, and from that single 
tramp there will spring forth armed legions. Shall 
one battle determine the fate of empire, or a dozen? 
the loss of one thousand men or twenty thousand, or 
$100,000,000 or $500,000,000? In a year's peace, 
in ten years, at most, of peaceful progress, we can 
restore them all. There will be some graves reeking 
with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There 
will be some privation; there will be some loss of 
luxury ; there will be somewhat more need for labor 
to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, 
all is said. If we have the country, the whole coun- 
try, the Union, the Constitution, free government — 
with these there will return all the blessings of well- 
ordered civilization, the path of the country will be 
a career of greatness and of glory such as, in the 
olden times, our fathers saw in the dim visions of 
years yet to come, and such as would have been ours 
now, to-day, if it had not been for the treason for 
which the Senator too often seeks to apologize." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "I shall detain the Senate, 
sir, but a few moments in answer to one or two of 
the observations that fell from the Senator from 
California — " 

Mr. Baker. "Oregon." 

Mr. Breckinridge. "The Senator seems to 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE Si 

have charge of the whole Pacific coast, though I do 
not mean to intimate that the Senators from CaH- 
fornia are not entirely able and willing to take care 
of their own State. They are. The Senator from 
Oregon, then. 

"Mr. President, I have tried on more than one 
occasion in the Senate, in parliamentary and respect- 
ful language, to express my opinions in regard to 
the character of our Federal system, the relations of 
the States to the Federal Government, to the Consti- 
tution, the bond of the Federal political system. 
They differ utterly from those entertained by the 
Senator from Oregon. Evidently, by his line of ar- 
gument, he regards this as an original, not a dele- 
gated Government, and he regards it as clothed with 
all those powers which belong to an original nation, 
not only with those powers which are delegated by 
the different political communities that compose it, 
and limited by the written Constitution that forms 
the bond of Union. I have tried to show that, in 
the view that I take of our Government, this war is 
an unconstitutional war. I do not think the Sen- 
ator from Oregon has answered my argument. He 
asks, what must we do ? As we progress southward 
and invade the country, must we not, said he, carry 
with us all the laws of war ? I would not progress 
southward and invade the country. 

"The President of the United States, as I again 
repeat, in my judgment only has the power to call 
out the military to assist the civil authority in ex- 
ecuting the laws ; and when the question assumes the 
magnitude and takes the form of a great political 
severance, and nearly half the members of the Con- 



52 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

federacy withdraw themselves from it, what then? 
I have never held that one State or a number of 
States have a right without cause to break the com- 
pact of the Constitution. But what I mean to say is 
that you cannot then undertake to make war in the 
name of the Constitution. In my opinion they are 
out. You may conquer them ; but do not attempt to 
do it under what I consider false political pretenses. 
However, sir, I will not enlarge upon that. I have 
developed these ideas again and again, and I do not 
care to reargue them. Hence the Senator and I 
start from entirely different standpoints, and his 
pretended replies are no replies at all. 

"The Senator asks me, Svhat would you have us 
do ?' I have already intimated what I would have us 
do. I would have us stop the war. We can do it. 
I have tried to show that there is none of that inex- 
orable necessity to continue this war which the Sen- 
ator seems to suppose. I do not hold that constitu- 
tional liberty on this continent is bound up in this 
fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest. Unon the 
contrary, I fear it will find its grave in it. The Sen- 
ator is mistaken in sunnosing that we can reunite 
these States by war. He is mistaken in supposing 
that eiehteen or twentv million upon the one side 
can subjugate ten or twelve million upon the other: 
or, if thev do subjugate them, that vou can restore 
constitutional government as our fathers made it. 
You will have to govern them as Territories, ps sug- 
gested bv the Senator, if ever thev are reduced to 
the dominion of the United States, or, as the Senator 
from Vermont called them, 'those rebellious prov- 
inces of this Union,' in his speech to-day. Sir, I 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 53 

would prefer to see these States all reunited upon 
true constitutional principles to any other object that 
could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the 
principles of our fathers, the Union of these States, 
to me the sacrifice of one unimportant life would be 
nothing; nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer to see 
a peaceful separation of these States, than to see 
endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which 
I see the grave of public liberty and of personal free- 
dom. 

"The Senator asked if a Senator of Rome had ut- 
tered these things in the war between Carthage and 
that Power, how would he have been treated ? Sir, 
the war between Carthage and Rome was altogether 
dififerent from the war now waged between the 
United States and the Confederate States. I would 
have said — rather than avow the principle that one 
or the other must be subjugated, or perhaps both de- 
stroyed — let Carthage live and let Rome live, each 
pursuing its own course of policy and civilization. 

"The Senator says that these opinions which I 
thus expressed, and have heretofore expressed, are 
but brilliant treason; and that it is a tribute to the 
character of our institutions that I am allowed to 
utter them upon the Senate floor. Mr. President, if 
I am speaking treason, I am not aware of it. I am 
speaking what I believe to be for the good of my 
country. If I am speaking treason, I am speaking 
it in my place in the Senate. By whose indulgence 
am I speaking? Not by any man's indulgence. I 
am speaking by the guarantees of that Constitution 
which seems to be here now so little respected. And, 
sir, when he asked what would have been done with 



54 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

a Roman Senator who had uttered such words, a 
certain Senator on this floor, whose courage has 
much risen of late, repHes in audible tones, 'he would 
have been hurled from the Tarpeian rock.' Sir, if 
ever we find an American Tarpeian rock, and a suit- 
able victim is to be selected, the people will turn, not 
to me, but to that Senator who, according to the 
measure of his intellect and his heart, has been the 
chief author of the public misfortunes. He, and 
men like him, have brought the country to its pres- 
ent condition. Let him remember, too, sir, that 
while in ancient Rome the defenders of the public 
liberty were sometimes torn to pieces by the people, 
yet their memories were cherished in grateful re- 
membrance; while to be hurled from the Tarpeian 
rock was ever the fate of usurpers and tyrants. I 
reply with the just indignation I ought to feel at 
such an insult offered on the floor of the Senate 
Chamber to a Senator who is speaking in his place. 
"Mr. President, I shall not longer detain the Sen- 
ate. My opinions are my own. They are honestly 
entertained. I do not believe that I have uttered one 
opinion here, in regard to this contest, that does not 
reflect the judgment of the people I have the honor 
to represent. If they do, I shall find my reward in 
the fearless utterance of their opinions; if they do 
not, I am not a man to cling to the forms of office 
and to the emoluments of public life against my con- 
victions and my principles; and I repeat what I ut- 
tered the other day, that if indeed the Common- 
wealth of Kentucky, instead of attempting to medi- 
ate in this unfortunate struggle, shall throw her 
energies into the strife, and approve the conduct and 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 55 

sustain the policy of the Federal Administration in 
what I believe to be a war of subjugation, and which 
is being proved every day to be a war of subjugation 
and annihilation, she may take her course. I am her 
son, and will share her destiny, but she will be repre- 
sented by some other man on the floor of this 
Senate." 

Mr. Baker. "Mr. President, I rose a few min- 
utes ago to endeavor to demonstrate to the honor- 
able Senator from Kentucky that all these imagina- 
tions of his as to the unconstitutional character of 
the provisions of this bill were baseless and idle. I 
think every member of the Senate must be con- 
vinced, from the manner of his reply, that that con- 
viction is beginning to get into his own mind; and 
I shall therefore leave him to settle the account with 
the people of Kentucky, about which he seems to 
have some predictions, which, I trust, with great 
personal respect to him, may, different from his 
usual predictions, become prophecy after the first 
Monday of August next." 

Thus closed the most sensational debate in the 
eloquent discussions of the 37th Congress. 



PEN PICTURES OF THE OLD SENATE 
AND THE NEW 

Senator John J. Crittenden's Great Speech 
AND the Vice-President's Oration 



The night of January 4, 1859, marked an event 
of uncommon interest in the legislative annals of our 
history. It was on this occasion that two of the 
great living actors and participants of the eventful 
scene set forth here delivered speeches which ex- 
plained and illuminated the subject upon which they 
addressed the Senate. 

John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckinridge 
were distinguished Kentuckians. Their speeches 
touched with a feeling of tenderness and thrilling in- 
terest the change of the old Senate Chamber to the 
new. 

It was noteworthy that the United States Senate 
should make a choice of its orators of two men 
from the same State. It was suggestive as well that 
one of these men represented the type of the old 
school statesman, while the other was the true ideal 
of the new regime. It must have been a picturesque 
scene when the white-haired Crittenden, bent with 
age, took the floor on that historic night, the last 
time that he was to appear as a speaker in the old 

56 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 57 

Senate, the scene of 18 years of association with 
him, for through these years he had been a United 
States Senator. No man has ever appeared in the 
senatorial forum who has wielded stronger influence 
than Mr. Crittenden. If the term "golden speech" 
can be applied to the utterances of any of the men 
of that day it certainly belongs to all that he had to 
say on every occasion. He never spoke except to 
speak well and directly to the question that was the 
subject of discussion. He was not a combative 
man in temperament. The whole spirit of his 
mental make-up was compromise. His name will 
always be associated with the great compromise 
measures of 1860-61 in any review of great legis- 
lative events. He had striven to bring together 
the warring factions, but all efforts in this direc- 
tion were futile. No man had the strength or 
power — the ability — to stem the tide. It was 
irresistible — rushing like a mighty torrent over 
all that came within its reach. Only a few days be- 
fore, Mr. Crittenden had presented the credentials of 
his successor, John C. Breckinridge. At the close 
of this Congress he retired to his Ashland home, 
where he resumed the practice of his profession, for 
in all the years of his public life he had not saved a 
dollar above his salary. He was a man of strict 
integrity. When the Rebellion came, and the coun- 
try was dealing with the issues of war, his only son 
entered the Confederate Army. After a brief period 
spent in retirement he was elected to the House of 
Representatives, and, true Roman as he was, while 
the position was regarded inferior in a sense to that 
he had held, he responded to the call of duty and took 



58 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

his seat in the House of Representatives at the open- 
ing of the following Congress. 

He served through this Congress with distinction, 
making some notable speeches, and returned again 
to the Southland. On the 14th day of April, 1863, 
he was stricken with paralysis in the city of Louis- 
ville, and after a brief illness passed to "the great 
beyond." 

It might be said that on the night of this eventful 
speech he was the central figure. He was a striking 
contrast to the handsome, dashing, youthful Breck- 
inridge, the very paragon of manliness in the health- 
ful vigor of youth. Breckinridge's career is alluded 
to elsewhere in these pages. No Senator has ever 
stood on the floor of the United States Senate, in the 
flush of manhood, with a great future before him, 
with higher aspirations, greater opportunities, with 
as many honors in store, as seemed before John C. 
Breckinridge in this great hour of his fame and 
his power. It did not seem within the bounds of 
reason to contemplate this picture and to strike the 
change that was to follow within two brief years. 
How quick and rapid are the fortunes of men! 
Here he was to-night almost at the pinnacle of fame, 
in the thirty-fifth year of his age, and we find the 
same John C. Breckinridge three years later, de- 
throned of his power, leading the vanguard of a sec- 
tion of the Southern forces, an organized army, 
against what he termed "subjugation and annihila- 
tion." Breckinridge had a strange career. He was 
the last of the Senators of the mighty group from 
the South to resign from the Senate. His State 
alone had not honored him, because he had been 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 59 

elected Vice-President of the United States, polling 
more votes in the electoral college than any can- 
didate for that office had ever received. Compare 
the oration in the old Senate Chamber with the 
speech he delivered in the Senate Chamber on Au- 
gust I, 1 86 1, when he said, speaking to an amend- 
ment offered by the Senator from Virginia: 

"Mr. President : The drama, sir, is beginning to 
open before us, and we begin to catch some idea of 
its magnitude. Appalled by the extent of it, and 
embarrassed by what they see before them and 
around them, the Senators who are themselves the 
most vehement in urging on this course of events 
are beginning to quarrel among themselves. * * 
* I wish to say a few words presently in regard 
to some of the provisions of this bill, and then the 
Senate and country may judge of the extent of those 
powers of which this bill is a limitation. I shall en- 
deavor, Mr. President, to demonstrate that the 
whole tendency of our proceedings is to trample the 
Constitution under our feet, and to conduct this con- 
test without the slightest regard to its provisions. 
Everything that has occurred since demonstrates 
that the view I took of the conduct and tendency of 
public affairs was correct. Already both Houses of 
Congress have passed a bill virtually to confiscate all 
the property in the States that have withdrawn, de- 
claring in the bill to which I refer that 'all property 
of every description employed in any way to pro- 
mote or to aid in the insurrection,' as it is denom- 
inated, 'shall be forfeited and confiscated.' I need 
not say, sir, that all property of every kind is em- 
ployed in these States directly or indirectly in aid of 



6o THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the contest they are waging, and consequently that 
bill is a joint confiscation of all property there." 

The first speech breathes the love of country, full 
of the enthusiasm of a patriot. The second speech 
foreshadows the action on his part that seemed to 
bespeak the political influence that was about him, 
and forecasts the mantle of rebellion that was to fall 
upon him. Then followed the resignation that was 
to mark the beginning of the life which cast over 
him a political gloom from which he never recovered 
— the close of a great political career. 

His military career was not a remarkable one. 
He first entered the campaign in Kentucky. He 
participated in the battle of Stone River, having 
risen previous to that date to the rank of major-gen- 
eral. He held an important command in Louisiana 
in the summer of 1863. On the 5th of August he 
attacked the Federal garrison at Baton Rouge and 
was repulsed. His later campaigns in East Ten- 
nessee and in Virginia have not brought him any en- 
viable distinction as a military officer. It remains 
to be seen what he could accomplish as Confederate 
Secretary of War. 

In later life he took up a work among the rail- 
road corporations that was not congenial to him. It 
was remunerative, but he was never satisfied, and it 
never filled the longing that was within him. He 
seemed always to be looking backward. No doubt 
he encouraged the belief that some day his disabil- 
ities would be removed. Had the National Gov- 
ernment conceded this to him there could be no ques- 
tion that he would have been returned to the 
United States Senate. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 6i 

Speech of Crittenden of Kentucky on the 
Removal to the New Hall, Tuesday, Janu- 
ary 4, 1859 

Mr. Crittenden. "I move you, Mr. President 
and Senators, that we proceed at once to the consid- 
eration of this report, and that it be adopted. That 
is the purpose for which I rise. Before, however, 
submitting that motion to the vote of the Senate, I 
hope that I may be indulged in a few words of part- 
ing from this Chamber. This is to be the last day 
of our session here; and this place, which has 
known us so long, is to know us no more forever as 
a Senate. The parting seems to me, sir, to be some- 
what of a solemn one, and full of eventful recollec- 
tions. I wish, however, only to say a few words. 

"Many associations, pleasant and proud, bind us 
and our hearts to this place. We cannot but feel 
their influence, especially I, Mr. President, whose lot 
it has been to serve in this body more years than any 
other member now present. That we should all be 
attached to it, that my longer association should at- 
tach me to it, is most natural. Mr. President, we 
cannot quit this Chamber without some feeling of 
sacred sadness. This Chamber has been the scene 
of great events. Here questions of American con- 
stitutions and laws have been debated ; questions of 
peace and war have been debated and decided ; ques- 
tions of empire have occupied the attention of this 
assemblage in times past ; this was the grand theater 
upon which these things have been enacted. They 
give a sort of consecrated character to this Hall. 

"Sir, great men have been the actors here. The 



62 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

illustrious dead, that have distinguished this body 
in times past, naturally rise to our view on such an 
occasion. I speak only of what I have seen, and 
but partially of that, when I say that here, within 
these walls, I have seen men whose fame is not sur- 
passed, and whose power and ability and patriotism 
are not surpassed, by anything of Grecian or of 
Roman name. I have seen Clay and Webster, and 
Calhoun and Benton, and Leigh and Wright, and 
Clayton (last though not least) mingling together 
in this body at one time, and uniting their counsels 
for the benefit of their country. They seem to our 
imagination and sensibilities, on such an occasion 
as this, to have left their impress on these very 
walls; and this majestic dome seems almost yet to 
echo with the voice of their eloquence. This Hall 
seems to be a local habitation for their names. This 
Hall is full of the pure odor of their justly-earned 
fame. There are others besides those I have named, 
of whom I will not speak, because they have not 
yet closed their careers — not yet ended their services 
to the country; and they will receive their reward 
hereafter. There are a host of others that I might 
mention — that deserve to be mentioned — but it 
would take too long. Their names are in no danger 
of being forgotten, nor their services unthought of 
or unhonored. 

"Sir, we leave behind us, in going from this 
Hall, these associations, these proud imaginations 
so well calculated to prompt to a generous emulation 
of their services to their country; but we will carry 
along with us, to the new Chamber to which we go, 
the spirit and the memory of all these things; we 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 63 

will carry with us all the inspiration which our 
illustrious predecessors are calculated to give; and 
wherever we sit we shall be the Senate of the United 
States of America — a great, a powerful, a conserva- 
tive body in the government of this country, and a 
body that will maintain, as I trust and believe, under 
all circumstances and in all times to come, the 
honor, the right, and the glory of this country. 
Because we leave this Chamber, we shall not leave 
behind us any sentiment of patriotism, any devotion 
to which the illustrious exemplars that have gone 
before us have set to us. These, like our house- 
hold gods, will be carried with us ; and we, the repre- 
sentatives of the States of this mighty Union, will 
be found always equal, I trust, to the exigencies of 
any time that may come upon our country. No 
matter under what sky we may sit; no matter what 
dome may cover us ; the great patriotic spirit of the 
Senate of the United States will be there; and I 
have an abiding confidence that it will never fail in 
the performance of its duty, sit where it may, even 
though it were in a desert. 

"But it is yet, sir, not possible to leave this Hall 
without casting behind us many longing and linger- 
ing looks. It has been the scene of the past ; the 
new Chamber is to be the scene of the future; and 
that future, I hope, will not be dishonored by any 
comparison to be made with the past. It, too, will 
have its illustrations of great public services ren- 
dered by great men and great patriots; and this 
body, the great preservative element of the Govern- 
ment, will discharge all its duties, taking care to 
preserve the Union of the States which they repre- 



64 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

sent — the source of all their honors, the source of 
the trust which they sit here to execute, the source 
as it has been and as it will be of their country's 
greatness, happiness, and prosperity, in time to come 
as it has been in the time that is past. 

"Mr. President, I cannot detain you longer. I 
move that the vote of the Senate be now taken on 
the report which has been presented, and that it 
be adopted." 

Speech of J. C. Breckinridge of Kentucky on 
THE Removal to the New Hall, Tuesday, 
January 4, 1859 

The Vice-President: "Senators, I have been 
charged by the committee to whom you confided the 
arrangements of this day, with the duty of express- 
ing some of the reflections that naturally occur in 
taking final leave of a Chamber which has so long 
been occupied by the Senate. In the progress of our 
country and the growth of the representation, this 
room has become too contracted for the representa- 
tives of the States now existing and soon to exist; 
and accordingly you are about to exchange it for 
a Hall affording accommodations adequate to the 
present and the future. The occasion suggests 
many interesting reminiscences; and it may be 
agreeable, in the first place, to occupy a few minutes 
with a short account of the various places at which 
Congress has assembled, of the struggles which 
preceded the permanent location of the seat of Gov- 
ernment, and of the circumstances under which it 
was finally established on the banks of the Potomac. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 65 

"The Congress of the Revolution was sometimes 
a fugitive, holding its sessions, as the chances of 
war required, at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, 
Annapolis, and Yorktown. During the period be- 
tween the conclusion of peace and the commence- 
ment of the present Government it met at Prince- 
ton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York. 

"After the idea of a permanent Union had been 
executed in part by the adoption of the Articles of 
Confederation, the question presented itself of fixing 
a seat of Government, and this immediately called 
forth intense interest and rivalry. 

"That the place should be central, having regard 
to the population and territory of the Confederacy, 
was the only point common to the contending part- 
ies. Propositions of all kinds were offered, debated, 
and rejected, sometimes with intemperate warmth. 
At length, on the 7th of October, 1783, the Congress 
being at Princeton, whither they had been driven 
from Philadelphia, by the insults of a body of 
armed men, it was resolved that a building for the 
use of Congress be erected near the falls of the 
Delaware. This was soon after modified by requir- 
ing suitable buildings to be also erected near the 
falls of the Potomac, that the residence of Con- 
gress might alternate between those places. But 
the question was not allowed to rest, and at length, 
after frequent and warm debates, it was resolved 
that the residence of Congress should continue at 
one place; and commissioners were appointed, with 
full power to lay out a district for a Federal town 
near the falls of the Delaware ; and in the mean time 
Congress assembled alternately at Trenton and An- 



66 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

napolis ; but the representatives of other States were 
unremitting in exertions for their respective lo- 
calities. 

"On the 23d of December, 1784, it was resolved 
to remove to the city of New York, and to remain 
there until the building on the Delaware should be 
completed; and accordingly, on the nth of Jan- 
uary, 1785, the Congress met at New York, where 
they continued to hold their sessions until the Con- 
federation gave place to the Constitution. 

"The commissioners to lay out a town on the 
Delaware reported their proceedings to Congress; 
but no further steps were taken to carry the resolu- 
tion into effect. 

"When the bonds of union were drawn closer by 
the organization of the new Government under the 
Constitution, on the 3d of March, 1789, the subject 
was revived and discussed with greater warmth than 
before. It was conceded on all sides that the resi- 
dence of Congress should continue at one place, and 
the prospect of stability in the Government invested 
the question with a deeper interest. Some mem- 
bers proposed New York, as being 'superior to any 
place they knew for the orderly and decent be- 
havior of its inhabitants.' To this it was answered 
that it was not desirable that the political capital 
should be in a commercial metropolis. Others ridi- 
culed the idea of building palaces in the woods. Mr. 
Gerry, of Massachusetts, thought it highly unrea- 
sonable to fix the seat of Government in such a 
position as to have nine States of the thirteen to 
the northward of the place; while the South Caro- 
linians objected to Philadelphia on account of the 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 67 

number of Quakers, who, they said, continually an- 
noyed the Southern members with schemes of eman- 
cipation. 

"In the midst of these disputes, the House of Rep- 
resentatives resolved, 'that the permanent seat of 
Government ought to be at some convenient place 
on the banks of the Susquehanna.' On the introduc- 
tion of a bill to give effect to this resolution, much 
feeling was exhibited, especially by the Southern 
members. Mr. Madison thought if the proceedings 
of that day had been foreseen by Virginia, that 
State might not have become a party to the Consti- 
tution. The question was allowed by every member 
to be a matter of great importance. Mr. Scott said 
the future tranquillity and well-being of the United 
States depended as much on this as on any ques- 
tion that ever had, or could, come before Congress ; 
and Mr. Fisher Ames remarked that every principle 
of pride and honor and even of patriotism was en- 
gaged. For a time, any agreement appeared to be 
impossible; but the good genius of our system 
finally prevailed, and on the 28th of June, 1790, 
an act was passed containing the following clause : 

" 'That a district of territory on the river Potomac, at some 
place between the mouths of the eastern branch and the Can- 
nogocheague, be, and the same is hereby, accepted, for the 
permanent seat of the Government of the United States.' 

"The same act provided that Congress should 
hold its sessions at Philadelphia until the first Mon- 
day in November, 1800, when the Government 
should remove to the district selected on the Poto- 
mac. Thus was settled a question which had pro- 
duced much sectional feeling- between the States. 



68 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

But all difficulties were not yet surmounted; for 
Congress, either from indifference, or the want of 
money, failed to make adequate appropriations for 
the erection of public buildings, and the commis- 
sioners were often reduced to great straits to main- 
tain the progress of the work. Finding it impos- 
sible to borrow money in Europe, or to obtain it 
from Congress. Washington, in December, 1796, 
made a personal appeal to the Legislature of Mary- 
land, which was responded to by an advance of 
$100,000; but in so deplorable a condition was the 
credit of the Federal Government that the State 
required, as a guarantee of payment, the pledge of 
the private credit of the commissioners. 

"From the beginning Washington had advocated 
the present seat of Government. Its establishment 
here was due, in a large measure, to his influence; 
it was his wisdom and prudence that settled dis- 
putes and conflicting titles; and it was chiefly 
through his personal influence that the funds were 
provided to prepare the buildings for the reception 
of the President and Congress. 

"The wings of the Capitol having been suffi- 
ciently prepared, the Government removed to this 
district on the 17th of November, 1800; or as Mr. 
Wolcott expressed it, left the comforts of Phila- 
delphia 'to go to the Indian place with the long 
name, in the woods on the Potomac' I will not 
pause to describe the appearance, at that day, of 
the place where the city was to be. Contemporary 
accounts represent it as desolate in the extreme, with 
its long, unopened avenues and streets, its deep 
./lOrasses, and its vast area covered with trees in- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 69 

Stead of houses. It is enough to say that Washing- 
ton projected the whole plan upon a scale of cen- 
turies, and that time enough remains to fill the 
measure of his great conception. 

"The Senate continued to occupy the north wing, 
and the House of Representatives the south wing 
of the Capitol, until the 24th of August, 1814, when 
the British army entered the city and burned the pub- 
lic buildings. This occurred during the recess, and 
the President immediately convened the Congress. 
Both Houses met in a brick building known as 
Blodgett's Hotel, which occupied a part of the square 
now covered by the General Post Office. But the 
accommodations in that house being quite insuffi- 
cient, a number of public-spirited citizens erected a 
more commodious building, on Capitol Hill, and 
tendered it to Congress ; the offer was accepted, and 
both Houses continued to occupy it until the wings 
of the new Capitol were completed. This building 
yet stands on the street opposite to the north- 
eastern corner of the Capitol Square, and has since 
been occasionally occupied by persons employed in 
different branches of the public service. 

"On the 6th of December, 18 19, the Senate as- i 
sembled for the first time in this Chamber, which 
has been the theater of their deliberations for more 
than thirty-nine years, and now the strifes and un- 
certainties of the past are finished, we see around us 
on every side the proofs of stability and improve- 
ment; this Capitol is worthy of the Republic; noble 
public buildings meet the view on every hand ; 
treasures of science and the arts begin to accumu- 
late. As this flourishing city enlarges, it testifies to 



70 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the wisdom and forecast that dictated the plan of 
it. Future generations will not be disturbed with 
questions concerning the center of population, or of 
territory, since the steamboat, the railroad, and the 
telegraph have made communication almost in- 
stantaneous. The spot is sacred by a thousand 
memories, which are so many pledges that the City 
of Washington, founded by him and bearing his 
revered name, with its beautiful site, bounded by 
picturesque eminences, and the broad Potomac, and 
lying within view of his home and his tomb, shall 
remain forever the political capital of the United 
States. 

"It would be interesting to note the gradual 
changes which have occurred in the practical work- 
ing of the Government, since the adoption of the 
Constitution; and it may be appropriate to this 
occasion to remark one of the most striking of them. 
"At the origin of the Government, the Senate 
seemed to be regarded chiefly as an executive coun- 
cil. The President often visited the Chamber and 
conferred personally with this body; most of its 
business was transacted with closed doors, and it 
took comparatively little part in the legislative de- 
bates. The rising and vigorous intellects of the 
country sought the arena of the House of Repre- 
sentatives as the appropriate theater for the dis- 
play of their powers. Mr. Madison observed, on 
1/ some occasion, that being a young man, and desir- 
ning to increase his reputation, he could not afford 
I 'to enter the Senate; and it will be remembered, 
that, so late as 1812, the great debates which pre- 
ceded the war and aroused the country to the asser- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 71 

tion of its rights, took place in the other branch of 
Congress. To such an extent was the idea of se- 
clusion carried, that when this Chamber was com- 
pleted, no seats were prepared for the accommoda- 
tion of the public; and it was not until years after- 
wards that the semi-circular gallery was erected 
which admits the people to be witnesses of your 
proceedings. But now, the Senate, besides its pe- 
culiar relations to the Executive Department of the 
Government, assumes its full share of duty as a co- 
equal branch of the Legislature; indeed, from the 
limited number of its members, and for other 
obvious reasons, the most important questions, es- 
pecially of foreign policy, are apt to pass first un- 
der discussion in this body, and to be a member of 
it is justly regarded as one of the highest honors 
which can be conferred on an American statesman. 

"It is scarcely necessary to point out the causes 
of this change, or to say that it is a concession both 
to the importance and the individuality of the 
States, and to the free and open character of the 
Government. 

"In connection with this easy but thorough transi- 
tion, it is worthy of remark that it has been ef- 
fected without a charge from any quarter that the 
Senate has transcended its constitutional sphere — 
a tribute at once to the moderation of the Senate, 
and another proof to thoughtful men of the com- 
prehensive wisdom with which the framers of the 
Constitution secured essential principles without in- 
conveniently embarrassing the action of the Gov- 
ernment. 

"The progress of this popular movement, in one 



72 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

aspect of it, has been steady and marked. At the 
origin of the Government no arrangements in the 
Senate were made for spectators; in this Chamber 
about one-third of the space is allotted to the public ; 
and in the new apartment the galleries cover two- 
thirds of its area. In all free countries the admis- 
sion of the people to witness legislative proceedings 
is an essential element of public confidence; and it 
is not to be anticipated that this wholesome prin- 
ciple will ever be abused by the substitution of 
partial and interested demonstrations for the ex- 
pression of a matured and enlightened public opin- 
ion. Yet it should never be forgotten that not 
France, but the turbulent spectators within the Hall, 
awed and controlled the French Assembly. With 
this lesson and its consequence before us, the time 
will never come when the deliberations of the Senate 
shall be swayed by the blandishments or the thunders 
of the galleries. 

"It is impossible to disconnect from an occasion 
like this, a crowd of reflections on our own past 
history, and of speculations on the future. The 
most meager account of the Senate involves a sum- 
mary of the progress of our country. From year 
to year you have seen your representation enlarge; 
time and again you have proudly welcomed a new 
sister into the Confederacy; and the occurrences of 
this day are a material and impressive proof of the 
growth and prosperity of the United States. Three 
periods in the history of the Senate mark, in strik- 
ing contrast, three epochs in the history of the 
Union. 

''On the 3d of March, 1789, when the Govern- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE ^z 

ment was organized under the Constitution, the 
Senate was composed of the representatives of 
eleven States, containing three milHon people. 

"On the 6th of December, 1819, when the Senate 
met for the first time in this room, it was composed 
of the representatives of twenty-one States, contain- 
ing nine million people. 

"To-day it is composed of the representatives of 
thirty-two States, containing more than twenty- 
eight million people, prosperous, happy, and still de- 
voted to constitutional liberty. Let these great 
facts speak for themselves to all the world. 

"The career of the United States cannot be meas- 
ured by that of any other people of whom history 
gives account ; and the mind is almost appalled at the 
contemplation of the prodigious force which has 
marked their progress. Sixty-nine years ago, thir- 
teen States containing three millions of inhabitants, 
burdened with debt, and exhausted by the long war 
of independence, established for their common good 
a free Constitution, on principles new to mankind, 
and began their experiment with the good wishes 
of a few doubting friends and the derision of the 
world. Look at the result to-day ; twenty-eight mil- 
lions of people, in every way happier than an equal 
number in any other part of the globe! the center 
of population and political power descending the 
western slopes of the Alleghany mountains, and the 
original thirteen States forming but the eastern 
margin on the map of our vast possessions. See 
besides Christianity, civilization, and the arts given 
to a continent; the despised Colonies grown into a 
Power of the first class, representing and protect- 



74 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

ing ideas that involve the progress of the human 
race; a commerce greater than that of any other 
nation ; every variety of climate, soil, and production 
to make a people powerful and happy; free inter- 
change between the States — in a word, behold pres- 
ent greatness, and, in the future, an empire to which 
the ancient mistress of the world in the height of her 
glory could not be compared. Such is our country ; 
ay, and more — far more than my mind could con- 
ceive or my tongue could utter. Is there an Amer- 
ican who regrets the past? Is there one who will 
deride his country's laws, pervert her Constitution, 
or alienate her people? If there be such a man, let 
his memory descend to posterity laden with the exe- 
crations of all mankind. 

"So happy is the political and social condition of 
the United States, and so accustomed are we to the 
secure enjoyment of a freedom elsewhere unknown, 
that we are apt to undervalue the treasures we pos- 
sess, and to lose, in some degree, the sense of obli- 
gation to our forefathers. But when the strifes of 
faction shake the Government, and even threaten it, 
we may pause with advantage long enough to re- 
member that we are reaping the reward of other 
men's labors. This liberty we inherit; this admir- 
able Constitution, which has survived peace and war, 
prosperity and adversity; this double scheme of 
Government, State and Federal, so peculiar and so 
little understood by other Powers, yet which pro- 
tects the earnings of industry, and makes the largest 
personal freedom compatible with public order. 
These great results were not acquired without wis- 
dom and toil and blood. The touching and heroic 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 75 

record is before tlie world; but to all this we were 
born, and, like heirs upon whom has been cast a 
great inheritance, have only the high duty to pre- 
serve, to extend, and to adorn it. The grand pro- 
ductions of the era in which the foundations of 
this Government were laid, reveal the deep sense its 
founders had of their obligations to the whole family 
of man. Let us never forget that the responsibilities 
imposed on this generation are by so much the 
greater than those which rested on our revolutionary 
ancestors, as the population, extent, and power of 
our country surpass the dawning promise of its 
origin. 

"It would be a pleasing task to pursue many 
trains of thought, not wholly foreign to this occa- 
sion, but the temptation to enter the wide field must 
be vigorously curbed; yet I may be pardoned, per- 
haps, for one or two additional reflections. 

"The Senate is assembled for the last time in 
this Chamber. Henceforth it will be converted to 
other uses; yet it must remain forever connected 
with great events, and sacred to the memories of 
the departed orators and statesmen who have en- 
gaged in high debates, and shaped the policy of 
their country. Hereafter the American and the 
stranger, as they wander through the Capitol, will 
turn with instinctive reverence to view the spot on 
which so many and great materials have accumu- 
lated for history. They will recall the images of the 
great and good, whose renown is the common prop- 
erty of the Union; and chiefly, perhaps, they will 
linger around the seats once occupied by the mighty 
three, whose names and fame, associated in life, 



76 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

death has not been able to sever; illustrious men, 
who in their generation sometimes divided, some- 
times led, and sometimes resisted public opinion — 
for they were of that higher class of statesmen who 
seek the right and follow their convictions. 

"There sat Calhoun, the Senator, inflexible, aus- 
tere, oppressed, but not overwhelmed by his deep 
sense of the importance of his public functions; 
seeking the truth, then fearlessly following it — a 
man whose unsparing intellect compelled all his 
emotions to harmonize with the deductions of his 
vigorous logic, and whose noble countenance habit- 
ually wore the expression of one engaged in the 
performance of high public duties. 

"This was Webster's seat. He, too, was even 
such a Senator. Conscious of his own vast powers, 
he reposed with confidence on himself; and scorn- 
ing the contrivances of smaller men, he stood 
among his peers all the greater for the simple dig- 
nity of his senatorial demeanor. Type of his 
Northern home, he rises before the imagination, in 
the grand and granite outline of his form and in- 
tellect, like a great New England rock repelling a 
New England wave. As a writer, his productions 
will be cherished by statesmen and scholars while the 
English tongue is spoken. As a senatorial orator, 
his great efforts are historically associated with this 
Chamber, whose very air seems yet to vibrate be- 
neath the strokes of his deep tones and his weighty 
words. 

"On the outer circle, sat Henry Clay, with his 
impetuous and ardent nature untamed by age, and 
exhibiting in the Senate the same vehement patriot- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE ^^ 

ism and passionate eloquence that of yore electrified 
the House of Representatives and the country. His 
extraordinary personal endowments, his courage, 
all his noble qualities, invested him with an indi- 
viduality and a charm of character which, in any 
age, would have made him a favorite of history. 
He loved his country above all earthly objects. He 
loved liberty in all countries. Illustrious man! — 
orator, patriot, philanthropist — his light, at its 
meridian, was seen and felt in the remotest parts 
of the civilized world; and his declining sun, as it 
hastened down the west, threw back its level beams, 
in hues of mellowed splendor, to illuminate and 
to cheer the land he loved and served so well. 

"All the States may point, with gratified pride, to 
the services in the Senate of their patriotic sons. 
Crowding the memory, come the names of Adams, 
Hayne, Mason, Otis, Macon, Pinckney, and the 
rest — I cannot number them — who, in record of 
their acts and utterances, appeal to their successors 
to give the Union a destiny not unworthy of the 
past. What models were these, to awaken emula- 
tion or to plunge in despair! Fortunate will be 
the American statesman, who in this age, or in suc- 
ceeding times, shall contribute to invest the new 
Hall to which we go with historic memories like 
those which cluster here. 

"And now. Senators, we leave this memorable 
Chamber bearing with us unimpaired the Constitu- 
tion we received from our forefathers. Let us 
cherish it with grateful acknowledgnients to the 
Divine Power who controls the destinies of em- 
pires and whose goodness we adore. The structures 



78 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

reared by men yield to the corroding tooth of Time. 
These marble walls must molder into ruin ; but the 
principles of constitutional liberty, guarded by wis- 
dom and virtue, unlike material elements, do not de- 
cay. Let us devoutly trust that another Senate in 
another age shall bear to a new and larger Chamber 
this Constitution, vigorous and inviolate, and that 
the last generation of posterity shall witness the de- 
liberations of the representatives of American States 
still united, prosperous and free." 



The Great Parliamentary Battle and Fare- 
well Addresses of the Southern Senators 
ON the Eve of the Civil War 



The session of Congress of 1 860-61 was re- 
markable for sensational argument and debate. The 
withdrawal of the Southern Senators upon sur- 
rendering their commissions as United States Sena- 
tors made this session memorable in American his- 
tory. The members of the House of Representa- 
tives from the seceding States, with one or two note- 
worthy exceptions, made no addresses. On the con- 
trary, the Senators from the South delivered vale- 
dictories, a farewell to old associates in the Senate 
Chamber, abandoned their seats and returned to 
their respective States to identify themselves with 
the Rebellion. 

The members of the House of Representatives in 
most cases withdrew, stating in a brief card before 
the Speaker that the people of their State had, in 
their sovereign capacity, resumed the powers dele- 
gated by them to the Federal Government of the 
United States, hence their connection with the 
House of Representatives was dissolved. Their 
method of withdrawal was brief and dignified. 

79 



8o THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

The card of withdrawal of the Mississippi dele- 
gation was drawn by L. Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi^ 
who had just embarked on his legislative career and 
was full of the fire of youth. He was a distin- 
guished man in the affairs of the Southern Con- 
federacy and his career afterward is noteworthy. 
He was one of the chosen few who recovered from 
the misfortunes of the Civil War and succeeded in 
re-establishing himself in the affections of his coun- 
trymen and lived to serve the National Government 
in positions of high honor and responsibility. He 
was returned after the war to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, where he rendered his State valuable 
services. For some years he was one of the great 
figures in the House. His great debate with James 
G. Blaine marks an interesting episode in the Lower 
House of Congress. He served as a U. S. Senator, 
and all through his senatorial career was one of the 
conceded leaders on the Democratic side of the 
Chamber. Later he became a member of the Cab- 
inet of President Cleveland, where his ability was 
conceded by all and commanded the attention, not 
of the Cabinet alone, but of the entire country as 
well, so when President Cleveland appointed him 
to the Supreme Court Bench of the United States 
it met with general approval, and while serving in 
this capacity his judicial decisions were recognized 
for their fairness, sound law and elegant diction. 

The Senators of the seceding States presented 
their case with a clear and logical analysis of the 
situation and with a ring and tone of fervor that be- 
spoke the intensity of their convictions. After the 
lapse of forty years, when the curtain is lifted anew 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 8i 

on the great scenes of that day, we are enabled to 
say that the scenes "were charged with what men 
believed to be right and had the courage to publish 
to the living and to their posterity." 

On January 21, 1861, the Senators from Florida, 
Alabama, and Mississippi formally withdrew from 
the Senate. Their speeches were full of lucid 
thought and they waged a strong manifesto against 
the free States for aiming to place their Government 
under the control of an anti-slavery Administration. 
The remarks of Senator Yulee excited deep interest 
because of the boldness of their declarations. He 
said that "the State of Florida through a conven- 
tion of her people had decided to recall the powers 
she had delegated to the Federal Government and 
assume the full exercise of her sovereign rights as 
an independent and separate community." He was 
followed by his colleague, who besought the North 
"not to repeat the folly of contending that the South 
would submit to the degradation and constrained 
existence of a violated Constitution." "The sub- 
jection of the South by war is impossible," said Mr. 
Mallory. He hurled thunderbolts of invective at 
the North. "Remember," he said, "that you are 
dealing with a nation, and not a faction." 

The formal announcement of withdrawal by 
Clement C. Clay. Jr., was received with a feeling 
of marked regret by his political opponents. Mr. 
Clay was a true representative of the Southern type 
of statesman of that day. His career in the Senate 
had been marked by a grace and mildness of tem- 
perament that made him beloved by all. In a re- 



82 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

cent publication entitled "A Belle of the Fifties," 
by Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, there is a graphic ac- 
count of the withdrawal of the Senators of ante- 
bellum days. Perhaps she can be best quoted by 
using her exact words, rather than distorted ex- 
tracts : 

"And now the morning dawned of what all knew 
would be a day of awful import. I accompanied my 
husband to the Senate, and everywhere the greeting 
or gaze of absorbed, unrecognizing men and women 
was serious and full of trouble. The galleries of the 
Senate, which held, it is estimated, a thousand peo- 
ple, were packed, principally with women, who, 
trembling with excitement, awaited the announce- 
ments of the day, as one by one Senators David 
Yulee, Stephen K. Mallory, Clement C. Clay, Ben- 
jamin Fitzpatrick, and Jefferson Davis arose. The 
emotion of their brother Senators and of us in the 
galleries increased when I heard the voice of my 
husband, steady and clear, declare in that Council 
Chamber: *Mr. President, I rise to announce that 
the people of Alabama have adopted an ordinance 
whereby they withdraw from the Union formed un- 
der a compact styled the United States, resume the 
powers delegated to it, and assume their separate 
station as a sovereign and independent people.' It 
seemed as if the blood within me congealed. 

"As each Senator, speaking for his State, con- 
cluded his solemn renunciation of allegiance to the 
United States women grew hysterical and waved 
their handkerchiefs, encouraging them with cries of 
sympathy and admiration. Men wept and embraced 
each other mournfully. At times the murmurs 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 83 

among the onlookers grew so deep that the Sergeant- 
at-Arms was ordered to clear the galleries; and as 
each Senator took up his portfolio and gravely left 
the Senate Chamber, sympathetic shouts rang from 
the assemblage. Scarcely a member of that sena- 
torial body but was pale with the terrible significance 
of the hour. There was everywhere a feeling of 
suspense, as if, visibly, the pillars of the temple were 
being withdrawn and the great Government struc- 
ture was tottering ; nor was there a patriot on either 
side who did not deplore and whiten before the evil 
that brooded so low over the nation. When Senator 
Clay concluded his speech many of his colleagues, 
among them several from Republican ranks, came 
forward to shake hands with him," 

The valedictory of Jefiferson Davis was so digni- 
fied, argumentative and statesmanlike in its presen- 
tation as to challenge the respect, if not the ap- 
proval, of his Republican colleagues. He drew some 
fine distinctions between nullification on the one 
side and secession on the other. "Nullification was 
the remedy in the Union, secession the remedy out- 
side." It was an impressive scene when the great 
Mississippi Senator closed his farewell address. He 
had been popular with his colleagues and the feel- 
ing prevailed that he was forfeiting more than the 
average Senator in identifying himself with the 
Southern cause. 

One of the most distinguished men of this Senate 
was Robert Toombs of Georgia, powerful of stature, 
strong of intellect, forceful of speech and in every 
sense a true representative of Southern statesman- 
ship. He did not deliver what may be termed 



84 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

strictly a farewell speech, but he took formal leave 
of the Senate on the 7th day of January, 1861, in a 
speech recalled for its boldness of utterance, close 
reasoning, and a studied declaration of what he 
regarded the dividing lines between the sections. 
On the 28th day of January, Alfred Iverson, his 
colleague, delivered a message to the Senate which 
marked the parting of the Georgia delegation. "The 
Rubicon is passed," he said, "and with my consent 
shall never be recrossed." 

On the 4th day of January Messrs. Slidell and 
Benjamin delivered their valedictories as Senators 
from Louisiana. Senator Slidell was aggressive and 
outspoken. He notified the Senate "if any steps 
should be taken to enforce the authority of the 
Union over the seceding States they would be re- 
sisted." He sounded the tocsin of war. 

In the group of antebellum Senators from the 
Southland J^idah P. Benjamin was by all odds the 
preeminent mind and the most dramatic figure that 
was fashioned to play its part in the scene before 
the Senate. Born of Jewish parentage, under that 
star that seems to shape the destiny of some men, — 
that makes them great, — Judah P. Benjamin had 
a career that reads like a novel. His parents were 
English Jews and the vessel that steered them to a 
new home from a foreign shore was stranded on the 
island of St. Croix, where thev were almost ship- 
wrecked in the storm. On this island was born 
Judah Philip Benjamin. It seemed to presage the 
future of this babe, for the life of Benjamin was a 
life of storm, struggle, and of heroic conflict. His 
masterful mind asserted itself in every sphere of 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 85 

action and in every vocation where he was called. 
His speeches in the Senate were really classic pro- ; 
ductions, full of that earnestness of expression we 
call eloquence. 

He was a lawyer of the highest attainments. In 
the legislative throes covering the decade of 
1850 to i860, the Congressional Record has no more 
felicitous utterances than those of Mr. Benjamin. 
His speeches were replete with profound reasoning 
and logical thought. He was a man of high char- 
acter and his public acts seemed to be prompted by 
the dictates of a conscience and judgment con- 
trolled by a higher power. From i860 until his 
dying day his life was filled with momentous ac- 
tion. He had enjoyed the highest honors and dis- 
tinctions that come to a public man under our form 
of government. Franklin Pierce offered him an ap- 
pointment to the United States Supreme Court, 
which he declined. He left the Senate Chamber 
to go into the Cabinet of Jefiferson Davis. His 
services to the Confederacy belong to the history 
of that period, but we cannot look back on the life 
of this man without being struck by the force of 
his career, remarkable and meteoric in the extreme. 
Ere reaching the highest pinnacle of fame in the 
United States during the Rebellion he descended to 
the lowest round of the ladder. 

It was a sad senatorial career at its close, when 
Judah P. Benjamin walked out of the Senate Cham- 
ber for the last time February 4, 1861. Memories 
must have crowded upon his mind of better and hap- 
pier days that he would have liked to live over again, 
but they were gone forever. Before him were the 



86 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

fitful, cruel, humiliating hardships to be imposed by- 
civil war, and for four years his life was to be 
obscured in the darkness of the Rebellion. We 
see him one day the central figure of a great gen- 
eration; the next day his life torn and tossed 
about in the pitiless storm of opposition. We feel 
as though we would like to blot out the page that 
tells us how this man became an exile; how, when 
the war clouds lowered, he was forced to seek an 
asylum in a foreign country, among strangers, after 
he had passed the meridian of life. What must 
have been his thoughts as he walked through the 
streets of Liverpool at night, impoverished by the 
exigencies of the war, with a new life before him! 
To see this man of mature years beginning as a 
student, taking up the study of the English law, 
really, it was pathetic — this struggle for honor 
and for fame anew. After spending three years 
in preparation he takes up the trial of paltry 
cases in the English courts and his genius even lights 
up the trial cases of a police court. Genius is often 
retiring. Within a few years he leaps to the front 
of the English bar and is recognized as the greatest 
lawyer of England in his day. He accumulates a 
fortune estimated at three hundred thousand dol- 
lars; he lives a new life; he has written his narrie 
on the tablets of fame of two continents! To-day 
his work is valued and quoted as an authority in 
law, both in England and the United States. 

It is said that the memory of other days at times 
seemed to hover over him and he rarely sought the 
lighter recreation of social enjoyment. Yet these 
opportunities, while denied by him, were sought by 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 87 

Others. The daughter of a celebrated English bar- 
rister, at whose fireside sat Mr. Benjamin, now bent 
with age and with his hair whitened by many win- 
ters, has said that he was the most charming com- 
panion, and would revel in his description of the 
days that were spent in his old Louisiana home. 
Yet he never gave an expression of his desire to 
visit the scenes of the theater of his marvelous past 
career in the land he had left behind him. No 
wonder that the last speech delivered by this man 
in the Senate of the United States was so peculiarly 
and intensely interesting, and that it excited the 
public mind all over the country. He brought his 
eminent legal ability to bear upon the question as 
he presented it. A writer of the history of that 
day has said that his speech was "full of specious 
pleading," but it was a magnificent forensic effort, 
and merited the praise of friend and foe alike. 

These pages have been amplified beyond the orig- 
inal purpose of the writer, who, after all, has but 
given a passing notice to Judah P. Benjamin. He 
was a great man — great in that he made himself 
superior to every obstacle, and was undaunted by 
the things that ordinarily crush lives and carry 
them down to defeat. His life at three different 
periods was crowned with success. Marvelous life! 
Kind was the Providence of God in allowing it to 
run to what the prophet of old declared was life's 
richest blessing, three score and ten. 

February 4, 1861, was the fateful day on which 
Judah P. Benjamin stamped the impress of his 
magnetic character for the last time on the pages of 
the United States Senate. He was then in the 



88 THE GREAT PARLIAIVIENTARY BATTLE 

meridian of his powers. It had been announced 
that he was to deUver on that day his farewell ad- 
dress to the Senate. Long before the hour for the 
Senate to convene the galleries were crowded out 
into the corridors. Every Senator was in his seat, 
and on the floor were many distinguished men from 
the Lower House. When the eventful moment ar- 
rived the great Senator stepped out into the arena, 
his handsome face flushed with the excitement of 
the hour and what was probably, in a sense, the 
most tragic and momentous of his life, in that it 
closed one career and opened up another; in that 
it was the passing of the old and the taking up of 
the new. He faced an audience large enough to in- 
spire the great effort he was about to deliver. There 
was a hush and a stillness when he addressed the 
presiding officer — then followed this great im- 
passioned masterpiece of eloquence : 



Farewell Speech of Judah P. Benjamin of 
Louisiana on the Occasion of His With- 
drawal FROM THE United States Senate on 
February 4, 1861 



"Mr. President, if we were engaged in the per- 
formance of our accustomed legislative duties, I 
might well rest content with the simple statement 
of my concurrence in the remarks just made by my 
colleague. Deeply impressed, however, with the 
solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible 
to the duty of recording, amongst the authentic re- 
ports of your proceedings, the expressions of my 
conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged 
and acted well and wisely in the crisis of her destiny. 

"Sir, it has been urged, on more than one oc- 
casion in the discussions here and elsewhere, that 
Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing. It has 
been said that whatever may be the rights of the 
States that were original parties to the Constitu- 
tion — even granting their right to resume for suffi- 
cient cause, those restricted powers which they dele- 
gated to the General Government, in trust for their 
own use and benefit — still Louisiana can have no 
such right, because she was acquired by purchase. 
Gentlemen have not hestitated to speak of the sov- 

89 



90 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

ereign States formed out of the territory ceded by 
France as property bought with the money of the 
United States, belonging to them as purchasers; 
and although they have not carried their doctrine 
to its legitimate results, I must conclude that they 
also mean to assert, on the same principle, the right 
of selling for a price that which for a price was 
bought. 

"A hundredfold, sir, has the Government of the 
United States been reimbursed by the sales of pub- 
lic property, of public lands, for the price of the 
acquisition; but not with the fidelity of the honest 
trustee has it discharged the obligations as regards 
the sovereignty. 

"If then, sir, the people of Louisiana had a right 
which Congress could not deny, of the admission 
into the Union with all the rights of all the citi- 
zens of the United States, it is in vain that the 
partisans of the rights of the majority to govern 
the minority with despotic control attempt to estab- 
lish a distinction, to her prejudice between her 
rights and those of any other State. The only 
distinction which really exists is this — that she can 
point to a breach of treaty stipulations expressly 
guaranteeing her rights as a wrong superadded to 
those which have impelled a number of her sister 
States to the assertion of their independence. 

"The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State 
are those of Virginia. No more, no less. Let those 
who deny her right to resume delegated powers, 
successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same 
right, in spite of her express reservation made and 
notified to her sister States when she consented to 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 91 

enter the Union. And, sir, permit me to say that 
of all the causes which justify the action of the 
Southern States I know none of greater gravity 
and more alarming magnitude than that now de- 
veloped of the denial of the right of secession. A 
pretension so monstrous as that which perverts a 
restricted agency, constituted by sovereign States 
for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism 
of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape 
from such despotism when powers not delegated are 
usurped, converts the whole constitutional fabric 
into the secure abode of lawless tyranny and de- 
grades sovereign States into Provincial dependen- 
cies. 

"It is said that the right of secession, if conceded, 
makes of our Government a mere rope of sand ; and 
to assert its existence imputes to the framers of the 
Constitution the folly of planting the seeds of death 
in that which was designed for perpetual exist- 
ence. If this imputation was true, sir, it would 
merely prove that their offspring was not exempt 
from that mortality which is the common lot of all 
that is not created by higher than human power. 
But it is not so, sir, that facts answer theory. For 
two-thirds of a century this right has been known 
by many of the States to be at all times within their 
power. Yet, up to the present period, when its 
exercise has become indispensable to a people men- 
aced with absolute extermination, there have been 
but two instances in which it has been even threat- 
ened seriously; the first, when Massachusetts led 
the New England States in an attempt to es- 
cape from the dangers of our last war with Great 



92 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Britain; the second, when the same State proposed 
to secede on account of the admission of Texas as 
a new State into the Union. 

"Sir, in the language of our declaration of seces- 
sion from Great Britain it is stated as an established 
truth that 'all experience has shown that mankind 
are more disposed to suffer while evils are suffer- 
able than to right themselves by abolishing the 
forms to which they have been accustomed.' And 
nothing can be more obvious to the calm and candid 
observer of passing events than that the disruption 
of the Confederacy has been due, in great measure, 
not to the existence but to the denial of this right. 
Few candid men would refuse to admit that the 
Republicans of the North would have been checked 
in their mad career, had they been convinced of the 
existence of this right and the intention to assert 
it. The very knowledge of its existence by prevent- 
ing occurrences which alone could prompt its exer- 
cise would have rendered it a most efficient instru- 
ment in the preservation of the Union. But, sir, if 
the fact were otherwise — if all the teachings of ex- 
perience were reserved — better, far better, a rope of 
sand, ay, the flimsiest gossamer that ever glistened 
in the morning dew, than chains of iron and shackles 
of steel ; better the wildest anarchy, with the hope, 
the chance, of one hour's inspiration of the glorious 
breath of freedom that ages of the hopeless bondage 
and oppression to which our enemies would reduce 
us. 

"We are told that the laws must be enforced; 
that the revenues must be collected; that the South 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 93 

is in rebellion without cause and that her citizens 
are traitors. 

"Rebellion ! The very word is a confession ; an 
avowal of tyranny, outrage, and oppression. It is 
taken from the despot's code and has no terror for 
other than slavish souls. When, sir, did millions 
of people as a single man rise in organized, de- 
liberate, unimpassioned rebellion against justice, 
truth and honor? Well did a great Englishman 
exclaim on a similar occasion : 

" 'You might as well tell me that they rebelled against the 
light of Heaven; that they rejected the fruits of the earth. 
Men do not war against their benefactors ; they are not mad 
enough to repel the instincts of self-preservation. I pro- 
nounce fearlessly that no intelligent people ever rose or ever 
will rise against a sincere, rational, and benevolent authority. 
No people were ever born blind. Infatuation is not a law of 
human nature. When there is a revolt by a free people with 
the common consent of all classes of society there must be a 
criminal against whom that revolt is aimed.' 

"Traitors! Treason! Ay, sir, the people of the 
South imitate and glory in just such treason as 
glowed in the soul of Hampden; just such treason 
as leaped in living flame from the impassioned lips 
of Henry; just such treason as encircles with a 
sacred halo the undying name of Washington ! You 
will enforce the laws. You want to know if we have 
a Government; if you have any authority to collect 
revenue ; to wring tribute from an unwilling peo- 
ple? Sir, humanity desponds and all the inspiring 
hopes of her progressive improvement vanish into 
empty air at the reflections which crowd on the 
mind at hearing repeated with aggravated enormity 
the sentiments at which a Chatham launched his in- 
dignant thunders nearly a century ago. The very 



94 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

words of Lord North and his royal master are re- 
peated here in debate not as quotations but as the 
spontaneous outpourings of a spirit the counterpart 
of theirs. In Lord North's speech, on the destruc- 
tion of the tea in Boston Harbor, he said : 

" 'We are no longer to dispute between legislation and taxa- 
tion ; we are now only to consider whether or not we have any 
authority there. It is very clear we have none, if we suffer 
the property of our subjects to be destroyed. We must pun- 
ish, control, or yield to them.' 

"And thereupon he proposed to close the port of 
Boston, just as the representatives of Massachu- 
setts now propose to close the port of Charleston in 
order to determine whether or not you have any 
authority there. It is thus that in 1861 Boston is to 
pay her debt of gratitude to Charleston, which in 
the days of her struggle proclaimed the generous 
sentiment that 'the cause of Boston was the cause 
of Charleston.' Who after this will say that Re- 
publics are ungrateful? Well, sir, the statesmen 
of Great Britain answered to Lord North's appeal, 
'Yield.' The courtiers and the politicians said, 
'Punish, control.' The result is known. History 
gives you the lesson. Profit by its teachings. 

"So, sir, in the address sent under the royal sign- 
manual to Parliament it was invoked to take meas- 
ures 'for better securing the execution of the laws' 
and acquiesced in the suggestion. Just as now the 
Executive under the sinister influence of insane 
counsels is proposing with your assent 'to secure 
the better execution of the laws' by blockading 
ports and turning upon the people of the States the 
artillery which they provided at their own expense 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 95 

for their own defense and entrusted to you and to 
him for that and for no other purpose. Nay, even in 
States that are now exercising- the undoubted and 
most precious rights of a free people, where there 
is no secession, where the citizens are assembHng 
to hold peaceful elections for considering what 
course of action is demanded in this dread crisis by 
a due regard for their own safety and their own 
liberty, ay, even in Virginia herself the people are 
to cast their suffrages beneath the undisguised 
menaces of a frowning fortress. Cannon are 
brought to bear on their homes, and parricidal hands 
are preparing weapons for rending the bosom of 
the mother of Washington. 

■'Sir, when Great Britain proposed to exact tribute 
from your fathers against their will Lord Chatham 
said: 

" 'Whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own ; no man 
has a right to take it from him without his consent. Whoever 
attempts to do it attempts an injury. Whoever does it com- 
mits a robbery. You have no right to tax America. I rejoice 
that America has resisted. Let the sovereign authority of this 
country over the Colonies be asserted in as strong terms as 
can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legis- 
lation whatever, so that we may bind their trade, confine their 
manufactures and exercise every power except that of taking 
money out of their own pockets without their consent.' 

"It was reserved for the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century and for the Congress of a Republic 
of free men to witness the willing abnegation of all 
power save that of exacting tribute. What Imperial 
Britain with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited 
power over dependent colonies could not even at- 
tempt without a vehement protest of her greatest 



96 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated form, if 
you can enforce it, against independent States. 

"Good God! Sir, since when has the necessity- 
arisen of recalling to American legislators the les- 
sons of freedom taught in lisping childhood by lov- 
ing mothers ; that pervade the atmosphere we have 
breathed from infancy; that so form part of our 
very being that in their absence we would lose the 
consciousness of our own identity? Heaven be 
praised that all have not forgotten them; and that 
when we shall have left these familiar halls, and 
when force bills, blockades, armies, navies and all 
the accustomed coercive appliances of despots shall 
be proposed and advocated, voices shall be heard 
from this side of the Chamber that will make its 
very roof resound with the indignant clamor of 
outraged freedom. Methinks I still hear ringing 
in my ears the appeal of the eloquent Representative 
[Hon. George H. Pendleton of Ohio] whose North- 
ern home looks down on Kentucky's fertile borders. 
Armies, money, blood cannot maintain this Union; 
justice, reason, peace may. 

"And now to you, Mr. President, and to my 
brother Senators on all sides of this Chamber. I 
bid a respectful farewell; with many of those from 
whom I have been radically separated in political 
sentiment my personal relations had been kindly, 
and have inspired me with a respect and esteem 
that I shall not willingly forget : with those around 
me from the Southern States, I part as men part 
from brothers on the eve of a temporary absence, 
with a cordial pressure of the hand and a smiling 
assurance of a speedy renewal of sweet intercourse 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 91 

around the family hearth. But to you noble and 
generous friends who, born beneath other skies, pos- 
sess hearts that beat in S3'mpathy with ours ; to you 
who, solicited and assailed by motives the most 
powerful that could appeal to selfish natures, have 
nobly spurned them all ; to you who in our behalf 
have bared your breasts to the fierce beatings of the 
storm and made willing sacrifice of life's most glit- 
tering prizes in your devotion to constitutional lib- 
erty; to you who ever made our cause your cause, 
and from many of whom I feel I part forever, what 
shall I, can I, say? Naught I know and feel, is 
needed for myself; but this I will say for the peo- 
ple in whose name I speak to-day; — whether pros- 
perous or adverse fortunes await you, one price- 
less treasure is yours, the assurance that an en- 
tire people honor your names and hold them in 
grateful and affectionate memory. But with still 
sweeter and more touching return shall your un- 
selfish devotion be rewarded. 

"When in after days the story of the present 
shall be written, when history shall have passed her 
stern sentence on the erring men who have driven 
their unoffending brethren from the shelter of their 
common home, your names will derive fresh luster 
from the contrast, and when your children shall 
hear repeated the familiar tale it will be with glow- 
ing cheek and kindling eye, their very souls will 
stand a tip-toe as their sires are named and they 
will glory in their lineage from men of spirit as 
generous and of patriotism as high-spirited as ever 
illustrated or adorned the American Senate." 



CELEBRATED DEBATE 

Debate Between Benjamin and Baker in the 
Senate Chamber on January 3D, 1861 

amendments to the constitution 



Mr. Bingham. "If there be no further morning 
business, I move that the Senate proceed to the con- 
sideration of the unfinished business of yesterday." 

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as 
in Committee of the Whole, resumed the considera- 
tion of the joint resolution (S. No. 48) introduced 
by Mr. Johnson, of Tennessee, proposing amend- 
ments to the Constitution of the United States. 

Mr. Baker. "Mr. President, I cannot resume the 
remarks which I propose to conclude briefly to-day, 
without rendering my thanks to the Senate for the 
courtesy which was extended toward me in allowing 
me to continue them now ; and adding to those 
thanks, others to the distinguished Senator from 
IlHnois [Mr. Douglas], whose just expectations of 
addressing the Senate to-day I will endeavor not 
very long to postpone. 

"I am not of those, Mr. President, who enter- 
tain the opinion that discussion upon all points of 

98 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 99 

difference between what I hate to call 'sections' of 
the Confederacy, can be otherwise than useful. I 
desire, for my part, to understand clearly and dis- 
tinctly from gentlemen upon the other side, what it 
is of which they complain. I desire to understand, 
as I may, the ground, the reason, the proof of that 
complaint ; because I am very sure that I intend, 
faithfully and loyally to the Constitution, to obviate 
all just, reasonable, and manly ground of opposi- 
tion to us. I do not propose, in the eyes of poster- 
ity, to place myself (if, indeed, they may ever glance 
upon me at all) in a position where good and wise 
men may say, 'that man, from pride of opinion or 
pride of party, fostered the feeling which led to the 
dissolution of the Union, and refused to listen to 
honorable and just complaint against him.' I do 
not mean to do that. Therefore it is that I inquire, 
respectfully, earnestly, probing it, as I believe, to 
the bottom, if I can, what it is that gentlemen are 
going to dissolve this Union about ? I say, with all 
respect to my distinguished friend from Kentucky 
[Mr. Crittenden], that to do that in a good temper, 
cannot do any harm ; and, sir, I feel, as I ought to 
feel upon this floor, nothing but sentiments of 
courtesy towards every member of this body. 1 
hope that so far I have thus conducted the discus- 
sion, and so I shall continue to the end. 

"I may remark, sir, that when the Senate ad- 
journed yesterday I was endeavoring to demon- 
strate that the complaint made by the distinguished 
Senator from Louisiana that we were endeavoring 
to establish a construction of the Constitution that 
slavery was the creature of local law, thereby banish- 



100 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

ing it from the Territories of the United States, if 
true, was not just as a matter of complaint; that 
whether he attacks the RepubHcan party, of which 
I am a humble member, or whether he attacks the 
great majority of the people of the North, with 
whom I feel a common sympathy, the attack is un- 
just, because the leading men of the South, the pub- 
lic opinion of the South, the leading men of the 
North, the public opinion of the North, the Democ- 
racy of the North, the Republicans of the North, 
the Whigs of the North, nay, all classes of politicians 
and all classes of men have agreed, according to the 
doctrine and teaching of our fathers, that slavery 
was in fact the creature of local law, only, and 
could not go into the Territories by virtue of that 
local law. That is what I have been endeavoring 
to establish so far, not so much as a matter of argu- 
ment as a matter of authority. 

"For that purpose, sir, I have read passages from 
the speeches of many distinguished gentlemen 
known to the country. I have one or two more; 
but out of respect to the time of the Senate I will 
pass to the discussion of other topics. I shall read 
next, directly upon this question of the right of the 
Southern people to go into the Territories with their 
slaves, the opinion of Mr. Cass, expressed in a 
speech delivered November 4, 1854, at Detroit." 

Mr. DooLiTTLE readj'^as follows : 

" 'The doctrine [of equality, etc.] never had any real founda- 
tion either in the Constitution or in the nature of the Confed- 
eration. It rested on the assumption that the public domain 
being acquired by the whole Union, the whole Union had equal 
rights in the enjoyment. This postulate is undeniable. But 
what then? It was contended further that the United States 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE loi 

could not enjoy its equal right of settlement upon the public 
lands, unless a comparatively small portion of its inhabitants, 
say three hundred and fifty thousand out of more than six 
million white persons could take their slaves with them, or, in 
other words, that every man from every State in the Union, 
had a right to take all his property to the public domain and 
there hold it — whisky, banks, or anything else — though pro- 
hibited by the local law. A true answer to this pretension is, 
that if any man. North or South, holds property not recog- 
nized as such or prohibited by the local law, his remedy is to 
be found, not in the violation of it, but in the conversion of 
such property into money, the universal representative of 
value, and take that to his new home, and there commence his 
work of enterprise in a new and growing community. 

" 'If the South has changed its views of this great question, 
the North has not ; nor is the unshaken adhesion of Northern 
men to their original convictions a just subject of complaint, 
any more than the expression of them in proper terms of for- 
bearance and moderation.' " 

Mr. Baker. " 'Nor is the unshaken adhesion' — 
I quote again his emphatic language — 'Nor is the 
unshaken adhesion of Northern men to their original 
convictions a just subject of complaint, any more 
than the expression of them in proper terms of for- 
bearance and moderation' — a very decided squint at 
the right itself and the right to express it. 

"Now, sir, it may be said that this is the opinion 
of a Northern man. While it is none the better, I 
am sure it is none the worse for that. Gentlemen 
will remember that I am quoting on all sides, from 
the chieftains of the people and the leaders of the 
war. But, not to be singular, and indeed to be, as 
I mean to be, perfectly respectful to all sections, I 
shall show by my next extract that Virginia, the 
mother of States and of statesmen, speaking by an 
authoritative voice on this floor — a voice which we 
all hear with pleasure, one of her distinguished 
Senators [Senator Hunter] — says what, according 



102 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

to the opinions of the Senator from Louisiana, must, 
I think, be considered of itself cause for dissolution." 
Mr. DooLiTTLE read, as follows : 

"Mr. Senator Hunter, in his speech, last fall, before the 
Breckinridge Democratic State convention, at Charlottesville, 
Virginia, said : 

" 'When I first entered the Federal councils, which was at 
the commencement of Mr. Van Buren's administration, the 
moral and political status of the slavery question was very dif- 
ferent from what it now is. Then the Southern men them- 
selves, with but few exceptions, admitted slavery to be a moral 
evil, and palliated and excused it upon the plea of necessity. 
Then there were few men of any party to be found in the non- 
slaveholding States who did not maintain both the constitution- 
ality and expediency of the anti-slavery resolution, now gen- 
erally known as the Wilmot proviso. Had any man at that 
day ventured the prediction that the Missouri restriction would 
ever be repealed, he would have been deemed a visionary and 
theorist of the wildest sort. What a revolution have we not 
witnessed in all this ! The discussion and the contest on the 
slavery question have gone on ever since, so as to absorb al- 
most entirely the American mind. In many respects the re- 
sults of that discussion have not been adverse to us. Southern 
men no longer occupy a deprecatory attitude upon the ques- 
tion of negro slavery in this country. While they by no means 
pretend that slavery is a good condition of things, under any 
circumstances and in all countries, they do maintain that, un- 
der the relations that the two races stand to each other here, 
it is best for both that the inferior should be subjected to the 
superior. The same opinion is extending even in the North, 
where it is entertained by many, although not generally ac- 
cepted. As evidence, too, of the growing change on this sub- 
ject of the public sentiment of the world, I may refer to the 
course of France and Great Britain in regard to the cooly and 
the African apprenticeship system as introduced into their 
colonies. That they are thus running the slave trade in an- 
other form is rarely denied. It is not to be supposed that 
these Governments are blind to the real nature of this cooly 
trade; and the arguments by which they defend it already af- 
ford an evidence of a grov.'ing change in their opinions upon 
slavery in general.' " 

Mr. Baker. "I have caused this passage to be 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 103 

read, Mr. President, for one purpose. With the 
argument I have now nothing to do ; with the opin- 
ion of the Senator from Virginia, that France and 
England are endeavoring to advance slavery in their 
own peculiar and pet way, I do not propose to deal ; 
but I do present it to show that Southern men have 
been always of the opinion of the fathers, that Con- 
gress had the power to restrict slavery in the Terri- 
tories, because slavery was the creature of local law 
alone. That is all, I do not say it proves it. I 
am sufficiently in the habit of differing from the 
Senator from Virginia not to take what he may 
say as evidence always ; but against the Senator from 
Louisiana — " 

Mr. Hunter. "I ask the Senator, does he say 
that he quoted that to show that I admitted that 
the Senators of the South believed there was power 
in Congress to restrict slavery in the Territories?" 

Mr. Baker. "Repeat, if you please." 

Mr. Hunter. "Does he mean to say that he 
quoted that in order to show that I maintained that 
it was the opinion of Southern men that there was 
a power in Congress to restrict slavery in the Terri- 
tories ?" 

Mr. Baker. "Not exactly; but I apprehend that 
I can ask the Senator two or three questions that 
will make him admit it right out now." [Laugh- 
ter.] 

Mr. Hunter. "All I can say is, that I have 
never admitted it yet." 

Mr. Baker. "And all I say, in answer to that, 
is, that it is never too late to do well. Now, I sub- 
mit to gentlemen everywhere ; I understand them to 



104 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

be in favor of establishing — I will not say establish- 
ing — protecting slavery in the Territories; I under- 
stand that that arises from the power of Congress 
to govern Territories. The Republicans generally 
admit the power to govern; and from that they 
argue the right to prohibit. I believe that, accord- 
ing to the later phase of Southern opinion — and it 
has many phases — the Southern gentlemen admit 
the power of Congress to govern the Territories; 
and from thence they argue the power to estab- 
lish, or, at least, to protect slavery ; and when, now, 
with the new fit, many of them profess to be in 
favor of the Missouri compromise, I suppose it will 
not be denied that that means just this : Congress 
has the power to govern the Territories ; and govern- 
ing them, it may govern them upon slavery as upon 
every other subject; the Constitution takes it there; 
they may regulate and protect it there; and if they 
may do it upon all the Territories, they may refuse 
to do it upon part. Some of them say so, and some 
of them deny it; but, at any rate, they all say, in 
making the Missouri compromise line, that it is the 
power of prohibition on one side, and of protection 
on the other. The distinguished Senator from Vir- 
ginia does not deny that, as I understand him. The 
distinguished Senator from Louisiana has not, in 
former years, denied that, as I have understood 
him." 

Mr. Benjamin. "Do I understand the Senator 
from Oregon to say that I ever admitted the power 
of Congress to exclude slaves from any portion of 
the public territory ?". 

Mr. Baker. 'T will not say that I am quite 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 105 

certain that the distinguished Senator has so done; 
and if he says otherwise, of course I would cheer- 
fully yield to the correction, if I had so said; but 
I may say that I do understand that gentlemen upon 
that side of the Chamber, at some period of their 
lives, in some of the phases of politics — when my 
friend was a Clay man; when my friend was a 
Whig; before the repeal of the Missouri compro- 
mise was proposed — at a time when most of us 
were singing hallelujahs to it, I should think it very 
strange if I could not prove that the gentleman was 
in favor of some line of separation between slavery 
and freedom." 

Mr. Benjamin. "Mr. President, I will answer 
the Senator, so far as I am concerned, that I never 
have admitted any power in Congress to prohibit 
slavery in the Territories anywhere, upon any occa- 
sion, or at any time in my life that I can remember. 
I will say further to him : so far as the question is 
concerned about the desire of the South to extend 
the line — that the Southern States, at the period of 
the acquisition of Territory from Mexico, proposed 
to extend that line — not upon the idea that Congress 
had the power to exclude slavery from any part of 
the Territory, but that, the representatives of the 
Southern States in both Houses consenting to that 
act, it would operate as an agreement or compact, 
not binding constitutionally, but binding upon the 
good faith of the people of all parts of the Confed- 
eracy. In that light they proposed to settle the 
question forever. They never did admit that Con- 
gress had the power, constitutionally, that I am 
aware of." 



io6 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Mr. Baker. "When the Senator says that he 
himself never did it, I am by no means disposed 
to dispute it, and particularly so, as I believe I have 
not asserted it; but the Senator does now say that 
the Southern people were in favor of the Missouri 
compromise — " 

Mr. Benjamin. "Excuse me." 

Mr. Baker. "I think that is what the Senator 
said." 

Mr. Benjamin. "That the Southern people 
were in favor, at the time of the acquisition of the 
new Territory from Mexico, of extending the line 
to the Pacific Ocean, and leaving it undisturbed, as 
a matter of compact, not as a matter of constitu- 
tional power. That was refused by the North." 

Mr. Baker. "Well, Mr. President, at a proper 
time and on a proper occasion, I think I could show 
the Senator that it would be very difficult to establish 
the proposition that anybody has a right to do by 
compact what will violate the Constitution. That 
is the sum total now of all he is saying." 

Mr. Benjamin. "Does the Senator deny that a 
State has a right to abandon any privilege accorded 
to it by the Constitution, if it does not choose to 
exercise it?" 

Mr. Baker. "No, sir; but this is what I do 
say : that if you, the Senator from Louisiana, do, in 
your conscience, believe that an act of Congress to 
prohibit slavery in the territory of the United 
States, or in any part or parcel thereof, is in viola- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States, and 
in derogation of the rights either of the States or 
the people — if, in your heart and conscience, you 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 107 

really do believe that, you are false and perjured 
when you do it. Let me add, as the language is 
strong, that I am quite as sure as I live, that, with 
that view, the Senator never would do it." 

Mr. Benjamin. "Mr. President, I endeavored 
to make my proposition as plain as I know how to 
do it. I say that, under the Constitution, Congress 
has no power to exclude the Southern States from 
participation in the Territory, from going there with 
their slave property, and there finding protection. 
I say that, notwithstanding the absence of all that 
congressional power, it is perfectly competent, and 
in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, 
for Southern members, even by way of an act of 
Congress, to pledge the honor of their States that 
they will not avail themselves of the privileges of go- 
ing into that part of the Territory that is north of a 
particular line, and of proposing that to the people 
of the North as a settlement of a disputed question 
— not because the act of Congress would thereby be 
binding, under the Constitution itself, but because it 
would be good and authentic evidence to the people 
of the North of an agreement by the people of the 
South not to insist on that part of the Constitution 
which gave that right." 

Mr. Baker. "Mr. President, I do this time cer- 
tainly clearly understand the distinguished Sena- 
tor from Louisiana, and yet I do not see any- 
thing fairly in reply to what I have urged upon 
him. Now, he tells me that the Southern people 
have agreed that slavery may be prohibited. How ? 
Sir, in passing the Missouri compromise bill, they 
did not merely agree to do it — the act of Congress 



io8 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

is not a mere evidence to be used in a court of honor 
that the people of Louisiana will not interfere with 
the bargain. That is not it ; but the act of Congress 
is a positive law, made under the sanction of an oath, 
in the light of the consciences of the men who agreed 
to it ; and I ask him in all fairness and honor, if he 
or I to-day vote in this Senate Chamber to prohibit 
slavery in a certain Territory, whether, if we be- 
lieve that we have no right under the Constitution 
to do that, we do not violate both the Constitution 
and our oaths when we render that vote? I think 
that from this position there is no escape. When 
Mr. Clay gave that vote, he had no constitutional 
doubt. When the South urged it, and the North 
agreed to it, they who voted had no constitutional 
doubt; or if they had, it vanished before the clear 
light of reason and argument. The North, as it is 
said, accepted it reluctantly ; at least they abided by 
it. When gentlemen destroyed it they ran after 
strange gods ; and now when many of them propose 
to come back to it, they are offering a truer and 
more acceptable worship. But, sir, the point of the 
argument is not to be evaded by any pretense that 
it is a mere agreement in a court of honor to do 
that which they have no legal and constitutional 
right to do. Suppose a gentleman from Alabama 
comes up and says: 'Sir, you, the Senator from 
Louisiana, have voted to prohibit me from taking 
my slaves into the Territory north of 36° 30' ; what 
do you mean by it; have you any right to do it?' 
'O, no,' the Senator says, 'no right in the world; 
it is just a sort of legislative flourish, a compact 
between us and somebody else, that having done it, 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 109 

we will never take it back; it is the exercise of a 
right which theoretically we do not claim; we have 
just done it — we do not exactly know why in point 
of law, but we have done it because we hope, having 
done it, nobody will undo it.' What will the strict 
constructionists on the other side say to that ? What 
words will they put in my mouth? 

"I do not think the argument can be defended 
other than upon the ground assumed by a justice 
of the peace, well known to my distinguished friend 
from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], old BolHng Green, in 
answer to a little law advice that I gave him on one 
occasion when the Senator and I were both very 
young men, and (if he will excuse me for saying so) 
very poor lawyers. [Laughter.] Old Boiling- 
Green, then a magistrate, came to me and said: 
'Baker, I want to know if I have jurisdiction in a 
case of slander.' I put on a very important air; 
looked at him steadily — looked as wise as I could, 
and I said to him: 'Squire, you have no such au- 
thority ; that is reserved to a court of general juris- 
diction.' 'Well,' said he, 'think again ; you have not 
read law very well, or very long ; try it again ; now, 
have I not jurisdiction; can I not do it?' 'No,' I 
said, 'you cannot.' Said he: 'Try once more; now, 
cannot I take jurisdiction.' 'No, sir,' said I, 'you 
cannot; I know it; I have read the law from Black- 
stone to ; well, I have read Blackstone, and I 

know you cannot do it.' 'Now, sir,' said he, 'I 
know I can; for, by Heaven, I have done it.' 
[Laughter.] I understand, now, that the sum total 
of the answer which is made to my objection as to 
the constitutionality of the Missouri compromise 



no THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

touching the consciences of the gentlemen who pro- 
posed to pass it without power, is just the reply of 
my old friend Boiling Green. They say, 'Theoreti- 
cally we have not the power ; constitutionally we 
have not the power; but, by Heaven, we have done 
it' [Laughter.] 

"Well, sir, I do not assume to deal with them 
in a court of conscience. That is their matter. I 
do not pretend to discuss the propriety of making 
a solemn act of the Congress of the United States 
merely evidence in a court of honor, subject, as 
I think, to a demurrer to evidence at least. That 
is none of my business. What I am dealing with 
is this : if that be the opinion of Virginia, of Lou- 
isiana, of the entire South ; if they have done it 
by their leaders, by their speeches ; if they have lived 
by it; if, being a compact, it is an executed com- 
pact ; if under it State after State has come into this 
Union, is it not too late for them to deny now that 
we are justified if we wish to adhere to that prin- 
ciple ? Have they a right to come and say : 'You 
are declaring slavery to be a creature of the local 
law, and we will justly dissolve the Union by revolu- 
tion in consequence thereof ? This is the sole pur- 
pose for which I have read all these extracts ; and I 
think, from the conclusion, that this is neither fair, 
nor just, nor right, nor constitutional. There is no 
escape. 

"But, sir, passing from that; the Senator from 
Louisiana, in the second item of the 'dreary cata- 
logue' which he recounts in his speech, says, in sub- 
stance, that we attack slavery generally. Now, I am 
going to reply at some little length to that count in 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE iii 

the indictment. I begin thus : if the gentleman means 
that, in violation of the Constitution of the United 
States, we of the North or West, by any bill, resolu- 
tion, or act, do in anywise interfere with the state 
and condition of slavery where it exists within the 
States of this Union, or any of them, by virtue of 
local law, by which alone it can be created, we deny 
it. We have offered no such interference ; we claim 
no such power. Sir, as I remember the history, as 
early as 1790, a committee of the House of Repre- 
sentatives — composed, with one exception, of North- 
ern men — reported to that Congress a resolution, 
which you will find in the great speech of Mr. Web- 
ster upon this point, declaring that we have no right 
or power to interfere with slavery in the States. 
That resolution was adopted by a Northern Con- 
gress — a body near two-thirds of whom were North- 
ern men ; and I say that from that day to this, 
according to my recollection, and in my best judg- 
ment, and on my conscience, I do not know, nor 
do I believe, that Congress has attempted seriously 
to doubt practically that doctrine, or in anywise to 
interfere with the condition of slavery in the slave 
States. Upon that point I am subject to correction 
on either hand." 

Mr. Benjamin. "If the Senator will permit me, 
the charge is not that Congress does it, but that the 
States do it." 

Mr. Baker. "Very well. I thank the gentle- 
man ; and with the directness which belongs to his 
character, and the courtesy which he can never for- 
get, I shall be happy if, only to carry down the argu- 
ment, whenever he sees a proper place, he will just 



112 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

direct my attention to the pith and marrow of the 
matter as he does now. Now, be it understood, on 
this given day of January, in the year of our Lord 
1 86 1, the great champion of the South upon this 
question gets up in his place in the Senate and ad- 
mits that there is no ground of complaint that the 
Federal Government ever has attempted to interfere 
with the existence of slavery in the Southern States. 
We will get that down upon the record, and I ap- 
prehend it will be quoted before this controversy 
is over, again and again. 

"But it is said that the Northern States, the West- 
ern States, in other words, the free States, do so 
interfere. Again we deny it. The fact is not so. 
The proof cannot be made. Why, sir, I might ask, 
in the first place, how can the States so interfere? 
Suppose Illinois, of which I desire to speak always 
with affectionate solicitude, and of which I can speak 
with considerable knowledge, were to violate all the 
opinions which she has manifested in her history, 
and desired to interfere with the existence of slavery 
in Virginia, how would she go about it? I have 
the profoundest respect for my friend as a lawyer; 
but I would like to know what bill he could frame 
by which Illinois could interfere with the existence 
of slavery in Virginia." 

Mr. Benjamin. "Mr. President, I will tell the 
Senator, not how they can do it by bill, but how 
they do it in acts. A body of men penetrated into 
the State of Virginia by force of arms, into a peace- 
ful village at the dead hour of night, armed with 
means for the purpose of causing the slaves to rise 
against their masters, seized upon the public prop- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 113 

erty of the United States, and murdered the inhabi- 
tants. A man was found in Massachusetts who, in 
pubHc speeches, declared that he approved of that, 
and that the invasion was right ; and the people of 
Massachusetts, by an enormous majority — the fact 
of that man's action placed before the people as a 
ground why he should be elected their Governor — 
elected him their Governor, indorsed the invasion of 
a sister State, indorsed the murder of the peaceful 
inhabitants of the State of Virginia. The people of 
Massachusetts, by the election of Andrews as their 
Governor, have indorsed the act of John Brown, 
have indorsed the invasion of a sister State, and the 
murder of its peaceful citizens at dead of night. 

"The people of Massachusetts in their collective 
capacity have done more. They have sent Senators 
upon this floor, whose only business has been, for 
year after year, to insult the people of the South ; 
here, in this common assembly of Confederate em- 
bassadors, to cast slander and opprobrium upon 
them ; to call them thieves, murderers, violators ; 
charge them as being criminals of the blackest dye ; 
and because the men who here represent Massachu- 
setts did that, Massachusetts has sent them back to 
repeat the wrong. They have done that, and 
nothing else, since ever I have been in the Senate." 

Mr. Wilson. "Mr. President — " 

Mr. Baker. "O, never mind. Mr. President, I 
asked the gentleman from Louisiana to point out 
to me and to the Senate, how. if the State of Illinois 
were desirous to interfere with the existence of 
slavery in Virginia, it could be done. I leave to his 
cooler temper and his better taste to examine how 



114 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

he has answered me. Why, sir, he runs off into a 
disquisition upon John Brown, which would not 
dignify a stump. Now, I submit that that is not 
the point between us. I hold that his answer is an 
acknowledgment that a free State cannot, as a State, 
interfere in any conceivable way with slavery in a 
slave State; and that being so, we advance another 
step. We agree now that Congress never has inter- 
fered, and that States never can. 

"But the gentleman says (and I do not reply to 
it now on account of what he has said at this mo- 
ment, but because it is another of the counts in the 
indictment) that individuals in the Northern States 
have interfered with slavery in the Southern States. 
I believe that to be true ; but being true, I ask, what 
then? Is that the chief ground of dissolution? 
Are you going to revolt for that? Will you plunge 
us into civil war for that? Is that all? Sir, let us 
examine it a little more closely. I pass, as un- 
worthy the dignity of the debate, the incidental at- 
tack which the Senator from Louisiana has chosen 
to make upon the people of Massachusetts, upon the 
Governor of that great State, and upon the dis- 
tinguished Senators from that State, who, in my 
judgment, are an honor on this floor to this body. 
It is not my purpose — they would not intrust me 
with their defense; nor is it needful that I should 
make it here or anywhere. That is not within the 
scope and purpose of this debate; but it is within 
the scope and purpose of this debate to examine how 
much of truth there is in the general sweeping 
charge which the Senator has chosen to make, and 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE IIS 

how much justification in the fact, if the fact be 
true. 

"Sir, the people of the Northern and Western 
States are a free people. We have there various 
rights guaranteed to us by our State Constitutions, 
among the chiefest of which are liberty of thought 
and freedom of speech. We are an inquiring peo- 
ple; we are an investigating people; and we are, no 
doubt, very subject to the charge often made against 
us, that we are a people of isms. Where there is 
perfect freedom of opinion, that must be the case in 
the nature of things. It is in the nature of the 
human mind itself. LaAvs will not restrain it. We 
cannot bind the human mind with fetters, nor can 
we limit it to modes of expression. It will think, 
and it will act, spite of all government, and beyond 
all law. It follows, as a consequence, that the peo- 
ple will not think alike ; and, of course, as there can- 
not be two ways perfectly right upon any one sub- 
ject, the people will not always think truly and 
wisely. 

"What then ? There are people in Massachusetts 
and in Illinois and in Oregon, who will not only 
violate the rights of the slave States, but the rights 
of the free. There are people in the North who 
will not only steal niggers, but steal horses. There 
are people in the North who will not only try to 
burn down houses in the slave States, but who will 
be incendiary in the free States. It is the duty of 
the distinguished Senator from Louisiana and my- 
self sometimes, as counsel, to defend such men. 
Nor do I know that such men or such defenses are 
confined to the North or the West alone. I appre- 



Ii6 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

hend if a grateful procession of the knaves and ras- 
cals, who are indebted to the distinguished Senator 
from Louisiana for an escape from the penitentiary 
and the halter, were to surround him to-day, it 
would be difficult for even admiring friends to get 
near him to congratulate him upon the success of 
his efforts upon this floor. [Laughter.] When, 
therefore, he says that individuals — not States, not 
Congress — but individuals in the free States, do 
attack in their individual capacity the honor and 
dignity of the slave States, and do run off their nig- 
gers, and do steal their property, and do kidnap, and 
do various other things contrary to their duty as 
good citizens, I am inclined, while I regret it, to 
believe the whole of it. 

"Springing from that, and evidenced, as I think, 
by the excited enumeration which the distinguished 
Senator has chosen to make of the wrongs and 
crimes of the State of Massachusetts and her Sena- 
tors; springing from that exaggerated mode of 
thought and expression, as to the free States, arises 
the spirit of the count in the indictment against the 
whole of us. Now, I beg leave to say to the honora- 
ble Senator, that the desire to interfere with the 
rights of slavery in the slave States is not the de- 
sire of the Northern people. It is not the desire of 
the people of Oregon, I know ; it is not the desire of 
the people of California, I am sure; it is not the 
desire of the people of Illinois, I would swear; and 
I may say more, that in all my association with the 
Republican party, I have yet to find among them, 
from their chiefs down to their humblest private. 
one man who proposes to interfere with the exist- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 117 

ence of slavery in the slave States by force, by legis- 
lation, or by congressional action. I have known 
no such man in all my short experience, nor do I 
believe that the Senator from Louisiana can point 
out any such man." 

Mr. Benjamin. "If the Senator merely desires 
me to answer him, I will tell him exactly what I 
said the other day : that the belief of the South is, 
and I admit I share it, that without intending to 
violate the letter of the Constitution by going into 
States for the purpose of forcibly emancipating 
slaves, it is the desire of the whole Republican party 
to close up the Southern States with a cordon of 
free States for the avowed purpose of forcing the 
South to emancipate them." 

Mr. Baker. "Very well, sir. See how glo- 
riously we advance step by step. We abandon now 
the charge that Congress does it; we abandon now 
the charge that States do it; we abandon now the 
charge that the individual members of the Northern 
and Western communities as a body desire to inter- 
fere with slavery contrary to law ; to violate any ex- 
isting right in the slave States; but we insist tena- 
ciously and pertinaciously on our fourth count in the 
indictment ; and it is this — " 

Mr. Benjamin. "The Senator, I trust, does not 
desire to misrepresent what I said." 

Mr. Baker. "I do not, sir." 

Mr. Benjamin. "I am confident that he does 
not. I understood the Senator to ask me, in rela- 
tion to the Republican party, what proof I had of 
their desire to destroy slavery in the States. I gave 
it to him. I did not say that independently of that, 



ii8 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

there were not other attacks upon Southern slavery. 
I just this moment referred him to the direct attack 
of the State of Massachusetts — the State as a State. 
Independently of that, by the further exemplification 
of the State of Massachusetts, I will refer him to 
the fact that her Legislature indorsed the vitupera- 
tions of her Senator on this floor, by an enormous 
majority, and made that a State act; and further- 
more, that she passed a law in violation of the rights 
of Southern slaveholders, and all her eminent legal 
men are now urging the State to repeal the law as 
a gross outrage upon the constitutional rights of 
the South." 

Mr. Baker. "Why, Mr. President, in a State 
where all her eminent legal men are desirous to 
rectify a wrong, I do not think, if the Senator will 
wait a little while, there can be any very great 
danger. Our profession is a very powerful one; 
and I have never known a State in which we all 
agree upon a legal proposition that we could not 
induce her to agree to it too. That is a mere an- 
swer in passing. 

"I insist, however — I know it is not quite pleas- 
ant to my friend, and I regret that it is not so — that 
I have brought him down to a clear statement by 
way of abandonment of three or four of the specifi- 
cations. It is now true that the great ground of 
complaint has narrowed itself down to this : that, 
as a people, we desire to circle the slave States with 
a cordon of free States, and thereby destroy the 
institLition of slavery ; to treat it like a scorpion girt 
by fire. I take that to be an abandonment of the 
main counts in the indictment, unless that be con- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 119 

sidered one of them. Now, I approach that ques- 
tion : first, if we, a free people, really, in our hearts 
and consciences, believing that freedom is better for 
everybody than slavery, do desire the advance of 
free sentiments, and do endeavor to assist that ad- 
vance in a constitutional, legal way, is that, I ask 
him, ground of separation?" 

Mr. Benjamin. "I say, yes; decidedly." 
Mr. Baker. "That is well. And I say just as 
decidedly, and perhaps more emphatically, no ! And 
I will proceed to tell him why. The argument is a 
little more discursive to-day than yesterday, but per- 
haps not less instructive. Suppose that circling 
slavery with a cordon of free States were a cause 
of separation, and therefore war with us: is it not 
just as much so with anybody else? It is no greater 
crime for a Massachusetts man or an Oregon man 
to circle, to girdle, and thereby kill slavery, than for 
a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or a Mexican. It 
is as much a cause of war against France, or Eng- 
land, or Mexico, as against us. 

"Again, sir : how are you going to help it ? How 
can we help it? Circle slavery with a cordon of 
free States! Why, if I read history and observe 
geography rightly, it is so girdled now. Which 
way can slavery extend itself that it does not en- 
croach upon the soil of freedom? Has the Senator 
thought of that? It cannot go North, though it is 
trying very hard. It cannot go into Kansas, though 
it made a convulsive effort, mistaking a spasm for 
strength. It cannot go South, because, amid the 
degradation and civil war and peonage of Mexico, 
if there be one thing under heaven they hate worse 



120 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

than another, it is African slavery. It cannot reach 
the islands of the sea, for they are under the shadow 
of France, that guards their shores against such in- 
fectious approach. It is circled ; I will not say gir- 
dled. I recollect the figure, familiar to us all, by 
which he intimates that that which is girdled will 
die. Therefore, I do not say girdled ; I say circled, 
inclosed, surrounded; I may say hedged in; nay, 
more, I may say — where is the Senator from New 
York [Mr. Seward], he is a prophet, and I wiH not 
predict; but, if I were not warned by his example 
and his prediction as to the 'irrepressible conflict,' I 
might say that, being so hedged, circled, guarded, 
encompassed, it will some day — it may be infinitely 
far distant, so far as mortal eye can see — but it will 
be some day lost and absorbed in the superior blaze 
of freedom. And, sir, that would be the case, just 
as much as it is now, if there were no Northern free 
States. What harm do I, in Illinois or Oregon, to 
the Senator from Louisiana? Where can his slav- 
ery go, that it is not now, unless it be in this dis- 
puted Territory of New Mexico? Where else? If 
it go anywhere else, it will go incursive, aggressive 
upon freedom. It will go by invading the rights 
of a nation that is inferior and that desires to be 
friendly. It will go in defiance of the wish and 
will and hope and tear and prayer of the whole civil- 
ized world. It will go in defiance of the hopes of 
civilized humanity all over the world. The Senator 
will not deny that. Therefore it is that it appears 
to me idle — and I had almost said wicked — to at- 
tempt to plunge this country into civil war, upon 
the pretense that we are endeavoring to circle your 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE i2l 

institution, when, if we had no such wish or desire 
in the world, it is circled by destiny, by Providence, 
and by human opinion everywhere. 

"I will press the Senator from Louisiana a little 
further. We of the Northern and Western States 
— and it is the complaint that our Abolitionists make 
against us — are the only allies you have got in the 
world. It is to us (and I speak it to you with 
affectionate kindness) that, in the hour of your ex- 
tremest trial, you are to look for sympathy, for 
succor, for support. You have with us what you 
call a league; what you call a compact; what we 
call a united Government, by which we are bound, 
in some points of view, to recognize your institution, 
and by that to afford you support in the hour of 
your danger. Why, sir, if your slaves revolt; if 
there be among you domestic insurrection — God 
grant the hour may never come! — we are called 
upon by our constitutional obligation to march to 
your support; and, though there be nothing worse 
than to fight in a servile war, unless it be to suffer 
in one, we of the North, when that hour shall arrive, 
will march to sustain you, our brethren, our kindred, 
the people of our race, with all our power. It is a 
painful subject to refer to, and I pass it with a single 
remark. 

"Again : by the Constitution of the United States 
we are required to protect you against the escape 
of your slaves through our Territories, to return 
them, and to return them in violation of common 
law and against the principles of international rela- 
tions acknowledged by the whole civilized world. 
Would France do that? Would Mexico do that? 



122 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Would England do that ? Would the Czar of Rus- 
sia do that? No, sir. It is to us, and to us alone, 
that you are to look for whatever of safety, of suc- 
cor, of sympathy, you can find in the whole world, 
and — I had well nigh said — in the whole universe. 

"There is, then, no ground of complaint against 
us, even if all you say be true, that we are surround- 
ing you by a girdle, a cordon, a circle of free States. 
Why, you seem to me to have the same notion with 
an old man in my country who was complaining 
that he was not rich enough. He was a farmer. 
He said he would be perfectly happy if he only had 
all the land that joined him. [Laughter.] It ap- 
pears to me that the complaint of the honorable 
Senator is, that slavery does not extend everywhere, 
without border, or limit, or girdle, or circle in the 
world. 

"Again : does the Senator remember, when he 
asks us to restrain this process of circling the slave 
States by the settlement of free communities upon 
their borders, that he is asking us to do what we 
have no power to do by our system of Government, 
or by our Constitution? What is the process? 
When slavery is circled, it is circled by the elastic, 
expansive power of free labor. California so cir- 
cled it ; Oregon so circles it. Make Arizona a Ter- 
ritory to-day; steal Sonora to-morrow; and there 
free labor will so circle it, spite of laws, spite of 
government. 

"Now, why should the Senator from Louisiana 
propose to dissolve with us because this is so? I 
would ask gentlemen on the other side: will it be 
any the less so if you dissolve with us? Will not 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 123 

our young men take their axes upon their shoulders, 
or their ox-whips in their hands, and drive their 
teams out in the wilderness upon the very edge and 
border of civilization, adventurous, fearless, elastic, 
expansive ? Do you not know that we will gear up 
the team, put the wife and children in the wagon, 
and be half way there — nay, that we will seize and 
possess the goodly land, while you are hallooing 
Tompey, Jube, Scipio, get ready and come?' That, 
sir — the peaceful progress of settlement and civiliza- 
tion — must be the real substantial ground of com- 
plaint, if there be any. 

"The Senator talks about John Brown; and he 
says the people of Massachusetts approved of John 
Brown. Let us rise to a higher view. Let the 
wing of our genius plume itself for a nobler flight 
than that, here — talking of peace and war in this 
Senate Chamber. Let us not confine ourselves to 
the mere bitterness of partisan discussion. John 
Brown is in his grave. We, as a party, do not con- 
demn the act of Virginia. We, as a party, do con- 
demn his act. We acknowledge it was in violation 
of the Constitution and of your law. We regret it. 
It found no sanction in the public mind. If there 
were men who were sorry, who admired his courage, 
who sympathized with what they believed to be the 
integrity of his purpose, though it were a very dan- 
gerous, and, in my judgment, a very unworthy pur- 
pose, will you dissolve for that? Why, sir, all that 
line of complaint — I may add all the argument based 
upon that complaint — is akin to the very peculiar 
remark made by the Senator from Texas [Mr. Wig- 
fall]. He turned to us the other day and conde- 



t24 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

scended to give us a list of the conditions upon which 
they would be graciously pleased to receive our 
capitulation. I do not remember it all. It was 
speculative, fanciful ; but there were some things in 
it kindred to the complaint and the argument of the 
Senator from Louisiana. For instance, he said to 
us : 'You representative men : you Sewards and 
Sumners and Hales and Wilsons, go home and in- 
struct your people to repeal your personal liberty 
bills; abolish your AboHtion societies; stop your 
presses, and do various things kindred to these, and 
when you have done that, come back to us and tell 
us that you have done it, and we will think about it.' 
Well now, sir, I think the mode of expression was 
extravagant. It was hardly what I had expected — 
it was the first speech I heard here — to hear in the 
Senate of the United States. The sentiment that 
prompts it is not unlike that of the Senator from 
Louisiana. He says : 'Do not girdle us ; do not 
circle us ; do not enclose us ; do not migrate so as 
to surround us.' That is our right. It would be 
our right if you were not in a common union with 
us. It would be your necessity and your misfor- 
tune, if there were no free States, no North and no 
West. Then, sir, as for destroying the liberty of 
our press, as for abolishing societies formed to pro- 
mote the abolition of slavery, or for any other pur- 
pose in the world, do Senators think when they 
ask us to do that ? Sir, I ask them how ? Whether 
they do it in their own States, it is not for me to 
determine. Whether the severe necessities of their 
condition will allow free and unrestrained discus- 
sion, it is not for me now to inquire. But I may 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 125 

inquire how do they expect us to aboHsh the right 
of free speech and of free discussion? It is a very 
unpleasant right sometimes, I know. Looking 
around upon distinguished men here, I suspect that 
I do not see one of them that has not suffered ex- 
cessively by an abuse of that power. I think I 
could read in the biography of every Senator near 
me, as given by his enemies, things very far from 
complimentary; and I suspect they make a good 
many people believe them. 

"I understand, sir, that wherever free govern- 
ment is, and wherever, as a consequence, free speech 
follows, there things may be said and will be said 
very unpleasant to hear, and very improper to be 
believed; and I think that I could show in commen- 
taries in England, even in Holland, and even in 
Belgium to-day, or wherever else besides here free 
speech is allowed, reflections upon Government, and 
upon the personal character of the rulers, as offensive 
to their tastes and their opinions as any the Senator 
from Texas or the Senator from Louisiana could 
point out uttered in any State of the North and 
West against them. The abuse is, if you like, an 
evil, incident to free government ; and how and why 
do you ask us to obviate in your case what we cannot 
remove in our own? Will you really make war 
upon us, will you really separate from us, because 
we cannot alter the model and frame of our free 
Government for which your fathers and ours fought 
side by side? You will not do that. 

"Mr. President, do gentlemen propose to us 
seriously that we shall stop the right of free discus- 
sion ; that we shall limit the free press ; that we shall 



126 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

restrain the expression of free opinion everywhere 
on all subjects and at all times? Why, sir, in our 
land, if there be any base enough, unreflecting 
enough, to blaspheme the Maker that created him, 
or the Saviour that died for him, we have no power 
to stop him. If there be the most bitter, unjust, 
and vehement denunciation upon all the principles 
of morality and goodness, on which human society 
is based, and on which it may most securely stand, 
we have, for great and overruling reasons connected 
with liberty itself, no power to restrain it. Private 
character, public service, individual relations — 
neither these, nor age, nor sex, can be in the nature 
of our Government exempt from that liability to 
attack. And, sir, shall gentlemen complain that 
slavery shall not be made, and is not made, an ex- 
ception to that general rule? You did that when 
you made what you call a compact with us. You 
were then emerging out of the war of Independence. 
Your fathers had fought for that right, and- more 
than that, they had declared that the violation of 
that right was one of the great causes which im- 
pelled them to the separation. 

"I submit these thoughts to gentlemen on the 
other side, in the candid hope that they will see at 
once that the attempt to require us to do for them 
what we cannot do for ourselves is unjust and cruel 
in the highest degree. Sir, the liberty of the press 
is the highest safeguard to all free government. 
Ours could not exist without it. It is with us, nay, 
with all men, like a great exulting and abounding 
river. It is fed by the dews of heaven, which distill 
their sweetest drops to form it. It gushes from 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 127 

the rill, as it breaks from the deep caverns of the 
earth. It is fed by a thousand affluents, that dash 
from the mountain top to separate again into a thou- 
sand bounteous and irrigating rills around. On its 
broad bosom it bears a thousand barks. There 
Genius spreads its purpling sail. There Poetry dips 
its silver oar. There Art, Invention, Discovery, 
Science, Morality, Religion, may safely and securely 
float. It wanders through every land. It is a 
genial, cordial source of thought and inspiration, 
v^^herever it touches, whatever it surrounds. Sir, 
upon its borders there grows every flower of grace 
and every fruit of truth. I am not here to deny 
that that river sometimes oversteps its bounds. I 
am not here to deny that that stream sometimes 
becomes a dangerous torrent, and destroys towns 
and cities upon its bank ; but I am here to say that, 
without it, civilization, humanity, government, all 
that makes society itself, would disappear, and the 
world would return to its ancient barbarism. Sir, 
if that were to be possible, or so thought for a mo- 
ment, the fine conception of the great poet would be 
realized. If that were to be possible, though but 
for a moment, civilization itself would roll the 
wheels of its car backward for two thousand years. 
Sir, if that were so, it would be true that, 

" 'As one by one in dread Medea's train, 
Star after star fades off th' ethereal plain, 
Thus at her felt approach and secret might, 
Art after art goes out, and all is night. 
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, 
Sinks to her second cause, and is no more. 
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
And unawares morality expires.' 



128 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"Sir, we will not risk these consequences, even 
for slavery; we will not risk these consequences 
even for union ; we will not risk these consequences 
to avoid that civil war with which you threaten us ; 
that war which you announce as deadly, and which 
you declare to be inevitable. 

"Sir, while I say that it is quite well that I should 
announce, at this moment, my opinion as to what 
we might do, I shall enter into no detail. I shall 
endeavor to bind nobody else. I shall express my 
own convictions at the moment, subject, of course, 
to all the changes that events and circumstances 
hereafter to transpire may justify. I will never 
yield to the idea that the great Government of this 
country shall protect slavery in any Territory now 
ours, or hereafter to be acquired. It is, in my 
opinion, a great principle of free government, not 
to be surrendered. It is, in my judgment, the object 
of the great battle which we have fought, and which 
we have won. It is, in my poor opinion, the point 
upon which there is concord and agreement between 
the great masses of the North, who may agree in 
no other political opinion whatever. Be he Republi- 
can, or Democrat, or Douglas man, or Lincoln man ; 
be he from the North, or the West, from Oregon, 
or from Maine, in my judgment, nine-tenths of the 
entire population of the North and West are de- 
voted, in the very depths of their hearts, to the great 
constitutional idea that freedom is the rule, that 
slavery is the exception, that it ought not to be ex- 
tended by virtue of the powers of the Government 
of the United States; and, come weal, come woe. it 
never shall be. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 129 

"But, sir, I add one other thing. When you 
talk to me about compromise or concession, I am 
not sure that I always understand you. Do you 
mean that I am to give up my convictions of right? 
Armies cannot compel that in the breast of a free 
people. Do you mean that I am to concede the 
benefits of the political struggle through which we 
have passed, considered politically, only? You are 
too just and too generous to ask that. Do you 
mean that we are to deny the great principle upon 
which our political action has been based? You 
know we cannot. But if you mean, b}^ compromise 
and concession, to ask us to see whether we have not 
been hasty, angry, passionate, excited, and in many 
respects violated your feelings, j^our character, your 
right of property, we will look : and. as I said yes- 
terday, if we have, we will undo it. Allow me to 
say again, if there be any lawyer or any court that 
will advise us that our laws are unconstitutional, 
we will repeal them. Such is my opinion. Even 
if our own courts do not believe so and yours do — I 
say yours, because I do speak now of a supreme 
court, not subordinate, but acquiescent — if that 
court shall declare these laws unconstitutional in any 
particular, we will yield. 

"Now as to Territor}\ I will not yield one inch 
to secession ; but tliere are things that I will yield, 
and there are things to which I will yield. It is 
somewhere told — and the fine reading of my friend 
from Louisiana will enable him to tell me where — 
that when Harold of England received a messenger 
from a brother with whom he was at variance, to 
inquire on what terms reconciliation and peace could 



130 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

be effected between brothers, he repHed in a gallant 
and generous spirit, in a few words, 'The terms I 
offer are the affection of a brother, and the earldom 
of Northumberland' ; 'And,' said the envoy, as he 
marched up the hall amid the warriors that graced 
the state of the king, 'if Tosti, thy brother, agree to 
this, what terms will you allow to his ally and friend, 
Hadrada, the giant?' 'We will allow,' said Harold, 
'to Hadrada, the giant, seven feet of English 
ground, and if he be as they say, a giant, some few 
inches more' : and as he spake, the hall rang with 
acclamation. 

"Sir, in that spirit I speak. I follow, at a humble 
distance, the ideas and the words of Clay, illustrious, 
to be venerated, and honored, and remembered for- 
ever. Upon this floor, in 1850, he said, in reference 
to a threat of secession : 

" 'Now, Mr. President, I stand here in my place, meaning 
to be unawed by any threats, whether they come from man, 
living or dead, that arms should be raised against the individ- 
uals or from States. I should deplore as much as any author- 
ity of the Union, either by individuals or by States. But, after 
all that has occurred, if any one State, or a portion of the 
people of any State, choose to place themselves in military 
array against the Government of the Union. / am for trying 
the strength of the Government. I am for ascertaining 
whether we have a Government or not — practical, efficient, 
capable of maintaining its authority, and of upholding the 
powers and interests which belong to a Government. Nor, 
sir, am I to be alarmed or dissuaded from any such course 
by intimations of the spilling of blood. If blood is to be spilled, 
by whose fault is it? Upon the supposition I maintain, it will 
be the fault of those who choose to raise the standard of dis- 
union, and endeavor to prostrate this Government ; and, sir, 
when that is done, so long as it pleases God to give me a voice 
to express my sentiments, or an arm, weak and enfeebled as it 
may be by age, that voice and that arm will be on the side 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 131 

of my country for the support of the general authority, and 
for maintenance of the powers of this Union.' 

"He said, I say, that I will yield no inch, no word, 
to the threat of secession, unconstitutional, revolu- 
tionary, dangerous, unwise, at variance with the 
heart and the hope of all mankind save themselves. 
To that I yield nothing; but if States loyal to the 
Constitution, if people magnanimous and just, desir- 
ing a return of fraternal feeling, shall come to us 
and ask for peace, for permanent, enduring peace 
and affection, and say, 'What will you grant?' I say 
to them, 'Ask all that a gentleman ought to propose ; 
and I will yield all that a gentleman ought to offer.' 
Nay, more : if you are galled because we claim the 
right to prohibit slavery in territory now free, or in 
any Territory which acknowledges our jurisdiction, 
we will evade — I speak but for myself — I will aid 
in evading that question ; I will agree to make it all 
States, and let the people decide at once. I will 
agree to place them in that condition where the 
prohibition of slavery will never be necessary to 
justify ourselves to our consciences or to our constit- 
uents. I will agree to anything which is not to 
force upon me the necessity of protecting slavery in 
the name of freedom. To that I never can and 
never will yield. 

"Now, Mr. President, I trust I say that in no 
spirit of unkindness. My friend from Louisiana, 
in his count — his hypothetical count — against us, 
supposes a case. He says : 'If you were to refuse 
South Carolina her two Senatorships ; if you were 
to allow her but one Senator, what then? Revolu- 
tion.' He says : 'What if a Northern President 



132 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

just elected should come in and give all the offices 
to Northern men, eating out the substance of us of 
the South, what then?' Well, I answer to that: 
'Wait, and do not dissolve the Union upon a hy- 
pothesis.' I might tell my friend from Louisiana 
that, after all, this thing of not having office is not 
so very hard to bear. We Whigs tried it a long 
time ; we Republicans have experienced it very often. 
I have been for nearly thirty years a man, and have 
never been able except for a very, very few months, 
during all that time, to have my slightest wish as to 
the General Government gratified, even to the ap- 
pointment of a tide-waiter. I have been, so far as 
the affairs of the General Government are concerned, 
as thoroughly disfranchised as if I were a Chinese 
or a Hottentot. What little of position or of place 
I have acquired, has been by the generous confidence 
of my own State; but I have been tabooed — not I 
alone, but we Whigs, we Republicans, have been 
tabooed by the General Government, I will not say 
vindictively, but, I will certainly say, uniformly. 
It is not so bad to take as you might suppose; it is 
nothing when you get used to it. [Laughter.] We 
have not proposed to dissolve the Union for that. 
Sir, we have never allowed the flame of our loyalty 
for one moment to fade because that was so. We 
have loved the Union all the better the worse we 
were governed in it, and we will continue to do so 
when we are beaten, as we shall sometimes be, to 
the end of the chapter. 

"I ask the distinguished gentleman from Louis- 
iana, does it not look — I will not say that it is that 
way — but does it not look as if you cannot bear the 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 133 

mortification of a little defeat? You have had all 
the offices, all the honors — the President on his 
throne, the dignity of this Chamber, the power of 
the House of Representatives, the acquiescence of 
the Supreme Court, a long array of foreign minis- 
ters. Cabinet officers — everything that can grace 
your state and form your procession; and most of 
you have had them ever since you were children ; 
and now, when, according to the will of the people, 
constitutionally expressed, you are likely to lose one 
branch of the Government for a brief season, and 
as many of you believe even if you remain with us 
but for a very brief season, you propose to dissolve 
this Government and inaugurate civil war. Why, 
sir, as the distinguished gentlemen from Tennessee 
[Mr. Johnson] has said so well, in a speech in 
which there are so many things with which I agree, 
that I grieve there should be so many others in 
which I cannot agree — a speech Jacksonian in its 
tone, often Websterian in its argument — as he has 
said, and well said, even in the case of the President, 
what can he do without you; you have a majority 
upon this floor; you can check him in his power of 
appointment; you can compel him to select good 
men. Will he touch slavery ; will his Cabinet ; will 
you let him? Who is to be hurt? A gentleman 
from Georgia said the other day that the Federal 
Government might comply with all the requisitions 
of the Constitution, and yet in ten years slavery 
cease to exist. How? 

[At this point, a chair occupied by Mr. Mason in 
the area in front of the Secretary's desk, owing to 



134 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the frail condition of its supporters, gave way, pre- 
cipitating its occupant to the floor.] 

"The incident before me, Mr. President, is not 
the only case where a fall will succeed dissolution. 
[Laughter.] 

"Sir, I am loth to believe that gentlemen are really 
in earnest in supposing, in the case before me, in be- 
lieving that if men will not serve in the South, and 
they are appointed from the North because you will 
not serve there, that is cause of separation. When 
we were engaged ten years ago, as I left this coast, 
in compromise, as some people say we are now, I 
heard somebody say, 'O, never mind, never mind; 
only give me a toll of a dollar apiece on all men of 
the South who will come over the Potomac to get 
office, and I would be a rich man.' I admit the 
sentiment is very different now in some of the 
Southern States, perhaps in all. I will say another 
thing : the sentiment to hold office now among loyal 
men at the South is not for the mere sake of office ; 
it is a higher hope and a holier purpose; they come 
now, when they do come, or as they shall come, for 
the Union, for good government, for constitutional 
government, for peace, for glory, and for the im- 
mortal renown of their country. Amid all the 
threats of dissolution, amid all the croakings and 
predictions of evil, when the gentleman gets up in- 
flamed by the momentary inspiration, and declares 
that there will be civil war, and when, while with 
one breath he says there will be civil war, in the 
next as he concludes, in an expression full of pathos, 
he says, 'Let us depart in peace,' 'crjang peace, peace, 
when there is no peace' — amid all this, I have great 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 135 

faith yet in the loyalty of the people of the South 
to the Union. I see around me to-day, on every 
hand, that the clouds are breaking away. I have 
great — I had well nigh said unshaken — confidence 
in right, in truth, and in duty. I see men of every 
shade of opinion upon other subjects, agreeing in 
this one thing : that in secession there is danger and 
death. I see from 'Old Chippewa,' from General 
Wool, from men of their high character, of their 
great age, of their proud career, of their enlarged 
patriotism, down to the lower ranks of men who 
love the country and venerate the Constitution — I 
see and I hear everywhere expressions that even yet 
fill the patriot heart with hope; and I am not with- 
out hope that, when there is delay, when time is 
allowed to the feverish sentiment to subside and for 
returning reason to resume its place, trusted to the 
people of this whole Union, the Constitution of the 
Union will remain safe, unshaken forever; yes, 
sir, until, 

" 'Wrapt in flames the worlds of ether glow, 

And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below.' 

"Sir, as I approach a close, I am reminded that 
the honorable Senator from Louisiana has said, in 
a tone which I by no means admire, 'Now, gentle- 
men of the North, a State has seceded; you must 
either acknowledge her independence, or you must 
make war.' To that we reply: we will take no 
counsel of our opponents; we will not acknowl- 
edge her independence. They say we cannot make 
war against the State; and the gentleman under- 
takes to ridicule the distinction which we make be- 
tween a State and individuals. Sir, it was a dis- 



136 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

tinctioii that Mr. Madison well understood; it was 
a distinction that General Jackson was very well 
determined to recognize ; it was the distinction which 
was made in the whole argument when the Consti- 
tution was formed; and I may say here and now, 
that all the arguments adduced by the gentleman 
from Elliot's Debates on the subject of the forma- 
tion of the Constitution, were arguments addressed 
against the propriety or wisdom of giving, under the 
old patched-up Confederation, power to the Govern- 
ment to compel States, because they could not ; they 
did not dare to do it, for they did not choose to con- 
found the innocent with the guilty, and make war on 
some portion of unoffending people because others 
were guilty; and therefore, among other reasons, 
the new Government was formed a Union, 'a more 
perfect Union,' by one people. That is the answer 
to the whole argument. 

"Now, sir, let us examine for a minute this idea 
that we cannot make war. First, we do not propose 
to do it. Does any gentleman on this side of the 
Chamber propose to declare war against South Car- 
olina? Did you ever hear us suggest such a thing? 
You talk to us about coercion; many of you talk to 
us as if you desired us to attempt it. It would not 
be very strange if a Government, and hitherto a 
great government, were to coerce obedience to her 
law upon the part of those who were subject to her 
jurisdiction. No great cause of complaint in that, 
certainly. 'But,' says the gentleman, 'these persons 
offending against your law are a sovereign State; 
you cannot make war upon her ;' and, following out 
with the acuteness of a lawyer what he supposes to 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 137 

be the modus operandi, he asks : 'What will you do 
if you will not acknowledge her independence, and 
you do not make war; how will you collect your 
revenue?' And he goes on to show very conclu- 
sively, to his own mind, that we cannot. He shows 
us how a skilful lawyer, step by step, will interpose 
exception, motion, demurrer, rejoinder, and sur- 
rejoinder, from the beginning to the end of the legal 
chapter ; and he says, with an air of triumph, which 
I thought did not well become a gentleman that is 
yet (may he remain so always) a Senator from a 
sovereign State, upon the floor of this Chamber; he 
says, with an air of triumph: 'It is nonsense; you 
cannot do it ; you will not acknowledge her ; you will 
not declare war; you cannot collect your revenue.' 
Sir, if that is the case to-day, it has been so for sev- 
enty years; we have been at the mercy of anybody 
and everybody who might choose to flout us. Is 
that true? Are we a Government? Have we 
power to execute our laws ? The gentleman threat- 
ens us with the consequences ; and he says if we at- 
tempt it, there will be all sorts of legal delays inter- 
posed, and when that is done, there will be a mob ; a 
great Government will be kicked out of existence 
by the tumultuous and vulgar feet of a mob, and he 
seems to rejoice at it. If we do not do it, he says, 
'Why do you not advance?' He puts me somewhat 
in mind of the lawyer — and belonging to that hon- 
orable profession myself, he will pardon me for al- 
luding to it — in the play of London Assurance, I 
think, who gets into a controversy with Cool, insults 
him, and says, when Cool does not kick him, that 
'he is a low, underbred fellow; he cannot afford 



138 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the luxury of kicking me: he knows he would have 
to pay for it.' [Laughter.] Why, Mr. President, 
against the legal objections to collecting the revenue 
in a case where South Carolina revolts, and indi- 
viduals refuse to pay duties, against the lawyership 
of my friend from Louisiana I will put another 
lawyer. General Jackson, a man of whom Mr. Web- 
ster said, that when he put his foot out he never took 
it back; and if the gentleman wants a solution of 
the difficulties as to the manner in which the revenue 
is to be collected near the sovereign State of South 
Carolina, when she is in a condition of revolt or 
revolution, I will show him what General Jackson 
thought, and ordered to be done, when South Caro- 
lina revolted once before. I will read, or my dis- 
tinguished friend, who sits near me, will read for 
me, the instructions of General Jackson as to the 
mode of collecting the revenue when South Caro- 
lina was preparing by ordinance of nullification to 
refuse to pay it." 

Mr. DooLiTTLE read, as follows, from President 
Jackson's instructions to the collector at Charleston, 
of the 6th of November, 1832 : 

" 'Upon the supposition that the measures of the convention, 
or the acts of the Legislature, may consist, in part at least, in 
declaring the laws of the United States imposing duties un- 
constitutional, and null and void, and in forbidding their exe- 
cution and the collection of the duties within the State of 
South Carolina, you will, immediately after it shall be formally 
announced, resort to all the means provided by the laws, and 
particularly by the act of the 2d of March, 1799, to counteract 
the measures which may be adopted to give effect to that 
declaration. 

" 'For this purpose you will consider yourself authorized to 
employ the revenue cutters which may be within your district, 
and provide as many boats, and employ as many inspectors as 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 139 

may be necessary for the execution of the law, and for the 
purposes of the act already referred to. You will, moreover, 
cause a sufficient number of officers of cutters and inspectors 
to be placed on board, and in charge of every vessel arriving 
from a foreign port or place with goods, wares, or mer- 
chandise, as soon as practicable after her first coming within 
your district, and direct them to anchor her in some safe 
place within the harbor, where she may be secure from any 
act of violence, and from any unauthorized attempt to dis- 
charge her cargo before a compliance with the laws ; and they 
will remain on board of her at such place until the reports 
and entries required by law shall be made, both of vessel and 
cargo, and the duties paid or secured to be paid to your sat- 
isfaction, and until the regular permit shall be granted for 
landing the cargo ; and it will be your duty, against any 
forcible attempt, to retain and defend the custody of said 
vessel by the aid of the officers of the customs, inspectors 
and officers of the cutters, until the requisitions of the law 
shall be fully complied with ; and in case of any attempt to 
remove her or her cargo from the custody of the officers of 
the customs, by the form of legal process from State tribunals, 
you will not yield the custody to such attempt; but will con- 
sult the law officer of the district, and employ such means 
as, under the peculiar circumstances, you may legally do, to 
resist such process, and prevent the removal of the vessel 
and cargo. 

" 'Should the entry of such vessel and cargo not be com- 
pleted, and the duties paid, or secured to be paid by bond, or 
bonds with securities to your satisfaction, within the time 
limited by law, you will, at the expiration of that time, take 
possession of the cargo, and land and store the same at 
Castle Pinckney, or some other safe place; and in due time, 
if the duties are not paid, sell the same, according to the direc- 
tion of the fifty-sixth section of the act of the 2d of March, 
1799; and you are authorized to provide such stores as may 
be necessary for that purpose.' " 

Mr. Baker. "Mr. President, there is my an- 
swer to the whole argument of inconvenience and 
impossibiHty on the part of the distinguished Sena- 
tor from Louisiana. There is the manner allowing 
all the ingenuity he can claim for his plan of defeat ; 
there is the way in which the Old Hero cut the knot 



140 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

which some people cannot untie. And that is 
neither an acknowledgment of the independence of 
South Carolina, nor is it war. If, from that, col- 
lision come, let him bear the danger who provokes it. 
"Why, sir, there is nothing practical in this at- 
tempted idea that we cannot punish an individual, or 
that we cannot compel him to obey the law, because 
a sovereign State will undertake to succor him. 
There is no more sense in that, than there was in the 
excuse made by a celebrated commander-in-chief for 
profane swearing. The Duke of York, as you may 
remember, sir, was, during the reign of George III, 
his father, not only commander-in-chief of the Brit- 
ish forces, but he was titular Bishop of Osnaburgh : 
that is, he had a little principality in Germany, which 
was originally related to the Church, and he was 
nominal bishop of that principality. At a tavern 
one day, while the commander-in-chief was swear- 
ing profanely, a gentleman of the Church of Eng- 
land felt it his duty to reprove him, and said to him, 
'Sir, I am astonished that a bishop should swear in 
the manner that you do.' 'Sir,' said he, 'I want you 
to distinctly understand that I do not swear as the 
Bishop of Osnaburgh ; I swear as the Duke of York, 
the commander-in-chief.' 'Ah, sir,' said the old 
man, 'when the Lord shall send the duke to hell, 
what will become of the bishop?' [Laughter.] 
Now, if, in consequence of an attempt to violate the 
revenue laws, some persons should be hurt, I do not 
know that it will better their condition at all that 
South Carolina will stand as a stake to their back. I 
think that is the plain common-sense answer to all 
that has been said on that subject. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 141 

"Sir. as I leave that branch of it, indeed as I leave 
the subject altogether, I will simply say that I hope 
it will never come. Whatever moderation, whatever 
that great healer, Time, whatever the mediation of 
those allied to these people in blood, in sympathy, in 
interest, may efifect. let that be done; but at last let 
the laws be maintained and the Union preserved. 
At whatever cost, by whatever constitutional pro- 
cess, through whatever of darkness or danger there 
may be, let us proceed in the broad luminous path of 
duty 'till danger's troubled night be passed and the 
star of peace returns.' 

"As I take my leave of a subject upon which I 
have detained you too long, I think in my own mind 
whether I shall add anything in my feeble way to the 
hopes, the prayers, the aspirations that are going 
forth daily for the perpetuity of the Union of these 
States. I ask myself, shall I add anything to that 
volume of invocation which is everywhere rising up 
to high Heaven, 'spare us from the madness of dis- 
union and civil war !' Sir, standing in this Chamber 
and speaking upon this subject, I cannot forget that 
I am standing in a place once occupied by one far, 
far mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am 
not worthy to unloose. It was upon this subject of 
secession, of disunion, of discord, of civil war, that 
Webster uttered those immortal sentiments clothed 
in immortal words, married to the noblest expres- 
sions that ever fell from human lips, which alone 
would have made him memorable and remembered 
forever. Sir, I cannot improve upon those expres- 
sions. They were uttered nearly thirty years ago, in 
the face of what was imagined to be a great danger, 



142 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

then happily dissipated. They were uttered in the 
fullness of his genius, from the fullness of his heart. 
They have found echo since then in millions of 
homes and in foreign lands. They have been a text- 
book in schools. They have been an inspiration to 
public hope and to public liberty. As I close, I re- 
peat them ; I adopt them. If in their presence I were 
to attempt to give utterance to any words of my 
own, I should feel that I ought to say, 

" 'And shall the lyre so long divine, 
Degenerate into hands like mine?' 

"Sir, I adopt the closing passages of that im- 
mortal speech ; they are my sentiments ; they are the 
sentiments of every man upon this side of the Cham- 
ber ; I would fain believe they are the sentiments of 
every man upon this floor ; I would fain believe that 
they are an inspiration, and will become a power 
throughout the length and breadth of this broad 
Confederacy; that again the aspirations and hopes 
and prayers for the Union may rise like a perpetual 
hymn of hope and praise. But, sir, however this 
may be, these thoughts are mine ; these prayers are 
mine; and, as reverently and fondly I utter them, I 
leave the discussion : 

" 'When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time 
the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken 
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on 
States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with 
civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let 
their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gor- 
geous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored 
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and 
trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased 
or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 143 

no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" 
nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first, 
and Union afterwards ;" but everywhere, spread all over in 
characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind 
under the whole Heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every 
true American heart, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable !" ' " 



Farewell Speech of Senator Robert Toombs 
OF Georgia, Delivered January 7, 1861 



Mr. Toombs. "Mr. President and Senators, I 
obtained the floor last Thursday with a view of ad- 
dressing this body upon the various propositions 
which were submitted to the committee of thirteen, 
of which I was a member. I am indifferent as to 
this substitution ; but not having seen the proposition 
of the Senator from Kentucky, my remarks will be 
confined mainly to the action of the committee of 
thirteen. This, I understand, is somewhat like one 
of the propositions, though not identically that one, 
to which I may have occasion to advert in the course 
of my argiunent on the propositions submitted by 
the honorable Senator from Kentucky in the com- 
mittee of thirteen. 

"The success of the Abolitionists and their allies, 
under the name of the Republican party, has pro- 
duced its logical results already. They have for 
long years been sowing dragons' teeth, and have 
finally got a crop of armed men. The Union, sir. is 
dissolved. That is an accomplished fact in the path 
of this discussion that men may as well heed. One 
of your confederates has already, wisely, bravely, 
boldly, confronted public danger, and she is only 

144 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 145 

ahead of many of her sisters because of her greater 
facihty for speedy action. The greater majority of 
those sister States, under Hke circumstances, con- 
sider her cause as their cause; and I charge you in 
their name to-day, 'Touch not Seguntum.' It is not 
only their cause ; but it is a cause which receives the 
sympathy and will receive the support of tens and 
hundreds of thousands of honest patriotic men in the 
non-slaveholding States, who have hitherto main- 
tained constitutional rights, who respect their oaths, 
abide by compacts, and love justice. And while this 
Congress, this Senate and this House of Representa- 
tives, are debating the constitutionality and the ex- 
pediency of seceding from the Union, and while the 
perfidious authors of this mischief are showering 
down denunciations upon a large portion of the 
patriotic men of this country, those brave men are 
coolly and calmly voting what you call revolution — 
ay, sir, doing better than that : arming to defend it. 
They appealed to the Constitution, thev appealed to 
justice, they appealed to fraternity, until the Consti- 
tution, justice, and fraternity were no longer listened 
to in the legislative halls of their countrv. and then, 
sir, they prepared for the arbitrament of the sword ; 
and now you see the glittering bayonet, and vou 
hear the tramp of armed men from your capital to 
the Rio Grande. It is a sight that gladdens the eves 
and cheers the heart of other millions ready to 
second them. Inasmuch, sir, as I have labored earn- 
estly, honestly, sincerely, with these men to avert 
this necessity so long as I deemed it possible, and 
inasmuch as I heartily approve their present conduct 
of resistance, I deem it my duty to state their case to 



146 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the Senate, to the country, and to the civiHzed 
world. 

"Senators, my countrymen have demanded no 
new Government; they have demanded no new 
Constitution. Look to their records at home and 
here from the beginning of this national strife until 
its consummation in the disruption of the Empire, 
and they have not demanded a single thing except 
that you shall abide by the Constitution of the 
United States; that constitutional rights shall be re- 
spected, and that justice shall be done. Sirs, they 
have stood by your Constitution ; they have stood by 
all its requirements; they have performed all of its 
duties unselfishly, uncalculatingly, disinterestedly, 
until a party sprang up in this country which en- 
dangered their social system — a party which they 
arraign, and which they charge before the American 
people and all mankind, with having made proclama- 
tion of outlawry against four thousand millions of 
their property in the Territories of the United 
States; with having put them under the ban of the 
Empire in all the States in which their institutions 
exist, outside of the protection of Federal laws ; with 
having aided and abetted insurrection from within 
and invasion from without, with the view of sub- 
verting those institutions, and desolating their 
homes and their firesides. For these causes they 
have taken up arms. I shall proceed to vindicate 
the justice of their demands, the patriotism of their 
conduct. I will show the injustice which they suf- 
fer and the rightfulness of their resistance. 

"I shall not spend much time on the question that 
seems to give my honorable friend [Mr. Crittenden] 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 147 

SO much concern — the constitutional right of a State 
to secede from this Union. Perhaps he will find out 
after a while that it is a fact accomplished. You 
have got it in the South pretty much in both ways. 
South Carolina has given it to you regularly, accord- 
ing to the approved plan. You are getting it just be- 
low there [in Georgia] I believe, irregularly, outside 
of law, without regular action. You can take it 
either way. You will find armed men to defend both. 
"I have stated that the discontented States of this 
Union have demanded nothing but clear, dis- 
tinct, unequivocal, well-acknowledged constitutional 
rights ; rights affirmed by the highest judicial tribu- 
nals of their country ; rights older than the Constitu- 
tion; rights which are planted upon the immutable 
principles of natural justice ; rights which have been 
affirmed by the good and the wise of all countries, 
and of all centuries. We demand no power to in- 
jure any man. We demand no right to injure our 
Confederate States. We demand no right to inter- 
fere with their institutions, either by word or deed. 
We have no right to disturb their peace, their tran- 
quillity, their security. We have demanded of them 
simply, solely — nothing else — to give us equality, 
security and tranquillity. Give us these, and peace 
restores itself. Refuse them, and take what you can 

"I will now read my own demands, acting under 
my own convictions, and the universal judgment of 
my countrymen. They are considered the demands 
of an extremist. To hold to a constitutional right 
now makes one considered an extremist — I believe 
that is the appellation these traitors and villains, 



148 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

North and South, employ. I accept their reproach 
rather than their principles. Accepting their desig- 
nation of treason and rebellion, there stands before 
them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel, as ever 
descended from revolutionary loins. 

"What do these rebels demand? First, 'that the 
people of the United States shall have an equal right 
to emigrate and settle in the present, or any future 
acquired Territories, with whatever property they 
may possess (including slaves) and be securely pro- 
tected in its peaceable enjoyment until such Terri- 
tory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with 
or without slavery, as she may determine, on an 
equality with all existing States.' That is our terri- 
torial demand. We have fought for this Territory 
when blood was its price. We have paid for it when 
gold was its price. We have not proposed to ex- 
clude you, though you have contributed very little 
of either blood or money. I refer especially to New 
England. We demand only to go into those Terri- 
tories upon terms of equality with you, as equals in 
this great Confederacy, to enjoy the common prop- 
erty of the whole Union, and receive the protection 
of the common Government, until the Territory is 
capable of coming into the Union as a sovereign 
State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit it- 
self. 

"The second proposition is : 'that property in 
slaves shall be entitled to the same protection from 
the Government of the United States, in all of its 
departments, everywhere, which the Constitution 
confers the power upon it to extend to any other 
property, provided nothing herein contained shall be 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 149 

construed to limit or restrain the right now belong- 
ing to every State to prohibit, abolish, or establish 
and protect slavery within its limits.' We demand 
of the common Government to use its granted pow- 
ers to protect our property as well as yours. For 
this protection we pay as much as you do. This 
very property is subject to taxation. It has been 
taxed by you, and sold by you for taxes. The title 
to thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is de- 
rived from the United States. We claim that the 
Government, while the Constitution recognizes our 
property for purposes of taxation, shall give it the 
same protection that it gives yours. Ought it not to 
do so? You say no. Every one of you upon the 
committee said no. Your Senators say no. Your 
House of Representatives says no. Throughout the 
length and breadth of your conspiracy against the 
Constitution, there is but one shout of no ! This rec- 
ognition of this right is the price of my allegiance. 
Withhold it, and you do not get my obedience. This 
is the philosophy of the armed men who have sprung 
up in this country. Do you ask me to support a 
Government that will tax my property ; that will 
plunder me ; that will demand my blood, and will not 
protect me? I would rather see the population of 
my own native State laid six feet beneath her sod 
than that they should support for one hour such a 
Government. Protection is the price of obedience 
everywhere, in all countries. It is the only thing 
that makes Government respectable. Deny it, and 
you cannot have free subjects or citizens; you may 
have slaves. 

"We demand, in the next place, 'that persons 



ISO THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

committing crimes against slave property in one 
State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered up in 
the same manner as persons committing crimes 
against other property, and that the laws of the 
State from v^hich such persons flee shall be the test 
of criminality.' That is another one of the demands 
of an extremist and rebel. The Constitution of the 
United States, article four, section two, says: 

" 'A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or 
other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in an- 
other State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the 
State from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the 
State having jurisdiction of the crime.' 

"But the non-slaveholding States, treacherous to 
their oaths and compacts, have steadily refused, if the 
criminal only stole a negro, and that negro was a 
slave, to deliver him up. It was refused twice on the 
requisition of my own State as long as twenty-two 
years ago. It was refused by Kent and by Fairfield, 
Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, 
each of the then Federal parties. We appealed then 
to fraternity, but we submitted; and this constitu- 
tional right has been, practically, a dead letter from 
that day to this. 

"The next case came up between us and the State 
of New York, when the present senior Senator [Mr. 
Seward] was the Governor of that State; and he re- 
fused it. Why? He said it was not against the 
laws of New York to steal a negro, and therefore he 
would not comply with the demand. He made a 
similar refusal to Virginia. Yet these are our con- 
federates ; these are our sister States ! There is the 
bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 151 

it. Both these Governors swore to it. The Senator 
from New York swore to it. The Governor of Ohio 
swore to it when he was inaugurated. You cannot 
bind them by oaths. Yet they talk to us of treason ; 
and I suppose they expect to whip freemen into 
loving such brethren ! They will have a good time 
in doing it ! It is natural we should want this pro- 
vision of the Constitution carried out. The Consti- 
tution says slaves are property; the Supreme Court 
says so ; the Constitution says so. The theft of slaves 
is a crime; they are a subject-matter of felonious as- 
portation. By the text and letter of the Constitution 
you agreed to give them up. You have sworn to do 
it, and you have broken your oaths. Of course, 
those who have done so look out for pretexts. No- 
body expected them to do otherwise. I do not think 
I ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who 
could not invent some pretexts to palliate his crime, 
or who could not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old 
Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this re- 
quirement of the Constitution is another one of the 
extreme demands of an extremist and a rebel. 

"The next stipulation is that a fugitive slave shall 
be surrendered under the provisions of the fugitive 
slave act of 1850, without being entitled either to a 
writ of habeas corpus or trial by jury, or other sim- 
ilar obstructions of legislation, in the State to which 
he may flee. Here is the Constitution : 

" 'No person held to service or labor in one State, under 
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence 
of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party 
to whom such service or labor may be due.' 



152 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"This language is plain, and everybody under- 
stood it the same way for the first forty years of 
your Government. In 1793, in Washington's time, 
an act was passed to carry out this provision. It 
was adopted unanimously in the Senate of the 
United States, and nearly so in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Nobody then had invented pretexts to 
show that the Constitution did not mean a negro 
slave. It was clear ; it was plain. Not only the Fed- 
eral courts, but all the local courts in all the States, 
decided that this was a constitutional obligation. 
How is it now ? The North sought to evade it ; fol- 
lowing the instincts of their national character, they 
commenced with the fraudulent fiction that fugitives 
were entitled to habeas corpus, entitled to trial by 
jury in the State to which they fled. They pre- 
tended to believe that fugitive slaves were entitled to 
more rights than their white citizens; perhaps they 
were right, they know one another better than I do. 
You may charge a white man with treason, or fel- 
ony, or other crime, and you do not require any trial 
by jury before he is given up ; there is nothing to de- 
termine but that he is legally charged with a crime 
and that he fled, and then he is to be delivered up 
upon demand. White people are delivered up every 
day in this way ; but not slaves. Slaves, black peo- 
ple, you say, are entitled to trial by jury ; and in this 
way schemes have been invented to defeat your plain 
constitutional obligations. In January, last year, I 
argued this question, and presented at the close of 
my speech a compilation made by a friend of mine, 
of the laws of the non-slaveholding States on this 
point. The honorable gentleman from Vermont 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 153 

[Mr. Collamer] commented upon the reference to 
his State, and the greater portion of his speech was 
taken up with a discussion of the particular act 
which was quoted in my appendix. I have no doubt 
the Senator did not know of the act of 1858, because 
certainly his argument would not have been made if 
he did ; he certainly was not informed as to the act 
of 1858. I will read him one or two of the sections 
of that act. I referred to and commented on it then 
in my speech; but in the appendix containing the 
compilation there was an accidental misreference. 
That act provides — 

" 'That every person who may have been held as a slave, 
who shall come or be brought or be in this State, with or with- 
out the consent of his or her alleged master — ' " 

Mr. Collamer. "What date is that?" 

Mr. Toombs. "Eighteen hundred and fifty-eight. 
It is entitled *An act to secure freedom to all persons 
in this State.' " 

Mr. Collamer. "That was not the one men- 
tioned in the Senator's speech." 

Mr. Toombs. "I have explained why it was not 
in the appendix; but I had read it, and I supposed 
the Senator had. The Senator made his speech on 
this reference, because, I suppose, it was more easily 
answered." 

Mr. Collamer. "I made the speech upon the 
one to which reference was made." 

Mr. Toombs. "That was very adroitly done, or 
very ignorantly done, I do not know which; but I 
want to set that portion of our record right. This 
was the act to which I referred, and upon which I 
commented in the body of the speech, though not in 



154 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the appendix, which was prepared by another 
person : 

" 'Every person who may have been held as a slave, who 
shall come, or be brought, or be in this State with or without 
the consent of his or her alleged master or mistress, or who 
shall come or be brought, or be in this State, shall be free.' 

"The Constitution of the United States says they 
shall not be free; Vermont says they shall; and yet 
all her legislators are sworn to obey the Constitu- 
tion. Vermont says if slaves come, voluntarily or 
involuntarily, with or without consent; if they flee 
from service, or come into Vermont in any way, 
they shall be free. The Constitution says they shall 
not be discharged from service if they flee; Ver- 
mont says they shall be. That is another one of our 
sisters, for whom it is said we ought to have a deep 
attachment. 

"Again : 

" 'Sec. 7. Every person who shall hold, or attempt to hold, 
in this State, in slavery, or as a slave, any free person, in any 
form or for any time, however short, under the pretense that 
such person is or has been a slave, shall, on conviction thereof, 
be imprisoned in the State prison for a term not less than five 
years nor more than twenty years, and be fined not less than 
$1,000 nor more than $10,000.' 

"This is decidedly fraternal! If a man passes 
voluntarily through the State of Vermont with his 
slave, that State, in her fraternal affection, will keep 
him fifteen years in the State prison and fine him 
$2,000. Fraternal, affectionate Vermont! I have 
made these references for the benefit of the Senator. 
Will he say that this was done only to carry out the 
decision in Prigg vs. Pennsylvania ? 

"I have heretofore shown that a plain constitu- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 155 

tional provision has been violated by specific acts in 
thirteen of these States ; but in the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress they finally do it, I believe, without acts of leg- 
islation. Mr. Lincoln and his party have taken an 
easier position ; and nov;^ such has been the rapid de- 
scent into error as Virgil describes that into hell, 
'smooth is the descent and easy the way,' that now 
they even refuse to admit that legislative acts are 
necessary to enable them to defeat the Constitution ; 
they profess to defeat it by circumvention; they 
think it better to be cunning than strong. Personal 
liberty bills are the bungling contrivances of a less 
advanced accomplishment in crime. I should not be 
surprised if they should repeal all of them, for they 
do not need them now. Lincoln says they are un- 
necessary; that by the Constitution it is settled that 
all men are created free and equal, and that all men 
are entitled to an equal participation in the Govern- 
ment, and that the Declaration of Independence re- 
fers to slaves; that no man shall be deprived of his 
life and liberty and property without the judgment 
of his peers or the law of the land. Apply these 
principles as the Black Republicans intend to apply 
them, and they have no need for personal liberty 
bills. They are far in advance of such contrivances. 
The progressive spirit of the age will not wait upon 
such devices. They may now dispense with these 
superseded devices ; but I undertake to say here that 
no Black Republican Legislature that repeals them 
will ever say that it is their purpose or duty to sur- 
render the fugitive. No, sir, they do not intend to 
do that. They may delude you in order to get 
power; they may deceive you to get possession of 



156 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

this Government; but there is neither faith, nor 
truth, nor manhood in this conspiracy. 

"The next demand made on behalf of the South 
is, 'that Congress shall pass efficient laws for the 
punishment of all persons in any of the States who 
shall in any manner aid and abet invasion or insur- 
rection in any other State, or commit any other act 
against the laws of nations, tending to disturb the 
tranquillity of the people or government of any 
other State.' That is a very plain principle. The 
Constitution of the United States now requires, and 
gives Congress express power, to define and punish 
piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, 
and offenses against the lazvs of nations. When the 
honorable and distinguished Senator from Illinois 
[Mr. Douglas] last year introduced a bill for the 
purpose of punishing people thus offending under 
that clause of the Constitution, Mr. Lincoln, in his 
speech at New York, which I have before me, de- 
clared that it was a 'sedition bill ;' his press and party 
hooted at it. So far from recognizing the bill as in- 
tended to carry out the Constitution of the United 
States, it received their jeers and gibes. The Black 
Republicans of Massachusetts elected the admirer 
and eulogist of John Brown's courage as their Gov- 
ernor, and we may suppose he will throw no impedi- 
ments in the way of John Brown's successors. The 
epithet applied to the bill of the Senator from Illi- 
nois is quoted from a deliberate speech delivered by 
Lincoln in New York, for which, it was stated in 
the journals, according to some resolutions passed 
by an association of his own party, he was paid a 
couple of hundred dollars. The speech should there- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 157 

fore have been deliberate. Lincoln denounced that 
bill. He places the stamp of his condemnation upon 
a measure intended to promote the peace and secur- 
ity of Confederate States. He is, therefore, an 
enemy of the human race, and deserves the execra- 
tion of all mankind. 

"We demand these five propositions. Are they 
not right? Are they not just? Take them in detail, 
and show that they are not warranted by the Consti- 
tution, by the safety of our people, by the principles 
of eternal justice. We will pause and consider 
them; but mark me, we will not let you decide the 
question for us. 

"But we are told by well-meaning but simple- 
minded people that admit your wrongs, your rem- 
edies are not justifiable. Senators. I have little care 
to dispute remedies with you, unless you propose to 
redress my wrongs. If you propose that in good 
faith, I will listen with respectful deference; but 
when the objectors to my remedies propose no ade- 
quate ones of their own, I know what they mean by 
the objection. They mean submission. I tell them, 
if I have good sight, perhaps the musket will im- 
prove my defective remedy. But still. I will as yet 
argue it with them. 

"These thirteen Colonies originally had no bond 
of union whatever ; no more than Jamaica and Aus- 
tralia have to-day. They were wholly separate com- 
munities, independent of each other, and dependent 
on the Crown of Great Britain. All the union be- 
tween them that was ever made is in writing. They 
made two written compacts. One was known as the 
Articles of Confederation, which declared that the 



158 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Union thereby formed should be perpetual — an ar- 
gument very much relied upon by 'the friends of the 
Union' now. Those Articles of Confederation in 
terms declared that they should be perpetual. I be- 
lieve that expression is used in our last treaty with 
Billy Bowlegs, the chief of the Seminoles. I know 
it is a phrase used in treaties with all nations, civil- 
ized and savage. Those that are not declared eternal 
are the exceptions ; but usually treaties profess to be 
for 'perpetual friendship and amity,' according to 
their terms. So was that treaty between the States. 
After a while, though, the politicians said it did not 
work well. It carried us through the Revolution, 
The difficulty was, that after the war there were 
troubles about the regulation of commerce, about 
navigation, but above all, about financial matters. 
The Government had no means of getting at the 
pockets of the people ; and but for that one difficulty, 
this present Government would never have been 
made. The country is deluded with the nonsense 
that this bond of union was cemented by the blood of 
brave men in the Revolution. Sir, it is false. It 
never cost a drop of blood. A large portion of the 
best men of the Revolution voted against it. It was 
carried in the convention of Virginia by but ten ma- 
jority, and among its opponents were Monroe and 
Henry, and other men who had fought the war, who 
recorded their judgment that it was not a good 
bond ; and I am satisfied to-day that they were the 
wiser men. This talk about the blood of patriots is 
intended to humbug the country, to scare the old 
women. Why, sir, it never cost a drop of blood. It 
was carried in some of the States by treachery, by 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 159 

men betraying their constituents. That is the his- 
tory of the times. Five votes would have tied it in 
Virginia. It passed New York by but three major- 
ity. Out of nearly four hundred in the convention 
of Massachusetts, it passed by nineteen. That is 
the history of the action of the three greatest States 
of the Union at that time. Some of the bravest and 
the boldest and the best men of the Revolution, who 
fought from its beginning to its end, were opposed 
to the plan of union ; and among them was the illus- 
trious author of the Declaration of Independence 
himself. Are we to be deterred by the cry, that we 
are laying our unhallowed hands on this holy altar ? 
Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that a very large 
portion of the people of Georgia, whom I represent, 
prefer to remain in this Union with their constitu- 
tional rights — I would say ninety per cent, of them 
— believing it to be a good Government. They have 
lived and prospered in it. Shallow-pated fools have 
told them this Government was the cause of their 
prosperity, and they have never troubled themselves 
to inquire whether or not this were true. I think it 
had but little to do with their prosperity beyond se- 
curing their peace with other nations, and that boon 
has been paid for at a price that no freeman ought 
to submit to. These are my own opinions; they 
have been announced to my constituents, and I an- 
nounce them here. Had I lived in that day, I should 
have voted with the majority in Virginia, with 
Monroe, Henry, and the illustrious patriots who 
composed the seventy-nine votes against the adop- 
tion of the present plan of Government. In my 
opinion, if they had prevailed, to-day the men of the 



i6o THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

South would have the greatest and most powerful 
nation of the earth. Let this judgment stand for 
future ages. 

"Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It con- 
tains all our obligations and duties of the Federal 
Government. I am content, and have ever been con- 
tent, to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection; 
while I do not believe it was a good compact; and 
while I never saw the day that I would have voted 
for it as a proposition de novo, yet I am bound to it 
by oath and by that common prudence which would 
induce men to abide by established forms, rather 
than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given to 
it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and 
allegiance ; but I choose to put that allegiance on the 
true ground, not on the false idea that anybody's 
blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitution is 
the whole compact. All the obligations, all the 
chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nom- 
inated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any 
conclusion against them, by declaring that the pow- 
ers not granted by the Constitution to the United 
States, or forbidden by it to the States, belonged to 
the States respectively or the people. Now I will 
try it by that standard ; I will subject it to that test. 
The law of nature, the law of justice, would say — 
and it is so expounded by the publicists — that equal 
rights in the common property shall be enjoyed. 
Even in a monarchy the king cannot prevent the 
subjects from enjoying equality in the disposition of 
the public property. Even in a despotic Government 
this principle is recognized. It was the blood and 
the money of the whole people (says the learned 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE i6i 

Grotius, and say all the publicists) which acquired 
the public property, and therefore it is not the prop- 
erty of the sovereign. This right of equality being, 
then, according to justice and natural equity, a right 
belonging to all States, when did we give it up? 
You say Congress has a right to pass rules and regu- 
lations concerning the Territory and other property 
of the United States. Very well. Does that ex- 
clude those whose blood and money paid for it? 
Does 'dispose of mean to rob the rightful owners? 
You must show a better title than that, or a better 
sword than we have. 

"But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. But 
how? By our judgment? No, not until the last re- 
sort. What then ; by yours ? No, not until the same 
time. How then try it? The South has always 
said, by the Supreme Court. But that is in our 
favor, and Lincoln says he will not stand that judg- 
ment. Then each must judge for himself of the 
mode and manner of redress. But you deny us that 
privilege, and finally reduce us to accepting your 
judgment. We decline it. You say you will enforce 
it by executing laws ; that means your judgment of 
what the laws ought to be. Perhaps you will have 
a good time of executing your judgment. The Sen- 
ator from Kentucky comes to your aid, and says he 
can find no constitutional right of secession. Per- 
haps not; but the Constitution is not the place to 
look for State rights. If that right belongs to inde- 
pendent States, and they did not cede it to the Fed- 
eral Government, it is reserved to the States, or to 
the people. Ask your new commentator where he 
gets your right to judge for us. Is it in the bond ? 



i62 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

''The Northern doctrine was, many years ago, 
that the Supreme Court was the judge. That was 
their doctrine in 1800. They denounced Madison 
for the report of 1799, on the Virginia resolutions; 
they denounced Jefferson for framing the Kentucky 
resolutions, because they were presumed to impugn 
the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United 
States; and they declared that that court was made, 
by the Constitution, the ultimate and supreme 
arbiter. That was the universal judgment — the 
declaration of every free State in this Union, in 
answer to the Virginia resolutions of 1798, or of all 
who did answer, even including the State of Dela- 
ware, then under Federal control. 

"The Supreme Court have decided that, by the 
Constitution, we have a right to go to the Territories 
and be protected there with our property. You say, 
we cannot decide the compact for ourselves. Well, 
can the Supreme Court decide it for us? Mr. Lin- 
coln says he does not care what the Supreme Court 
decides, he will turn us out anyhow. He says this in 
his debate with the honorable Senator from Illinois 
[Mr. Douglas]. I have it before me. He said he 
would vote against the decision of the Supreme 
Court. Then you do not accept that arbiter. You 
will not take my construction ; you will not take the 
Supreme Court as an arbiter; you will not take the 
practice of the Government; you will not take the 
treaties under Jefferson and Madison ; you will not 
take the opinion of Madison upon the very question 
of prohibition in 1820. What, then, will you take? 
You will take nothing but your own judgment : that 
is, you will not only judge for yourselves, not only 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 163 

discard the court, discard our construction, discard 
the practice of the Government, but you will drive us 
out, simply because you will it. Come and do it! 
You have sapped the foundations of society; you 
have destroyed almost all hope of peace. In a com- 
pact where there is no common arbiter, where the 
parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone 
at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, 
arbiter. Your party says that you will not take the 
decision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chi- 
cago ; you said so in committee ; every man of you in 
both Houses says so. What are you going to do? 
You say we shall submit to your construction. We 
shall do it, if you can make us ; but not otherwise, or 
in any other manner. That is settled. You may call 
it secession, or you may call it revolution ; but there 
is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose 
you — that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands. 
The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we 
have passed that point ; they demand equal rights ; 
you had better heed the demand. 

"You have no warrant in the Constitution for this 
declaration of outlawry. The court says you have 
no right to make it. The treaty says you shall not 
do it. The treaty of 1803 declares that the property 
of the people shall be protected by the Government 
until they are admitted into tlie Union as a State. 
That treaty covers Kansas and Nebraska. The law 
passed in 1804 or 1805. under Mr. Jefferson, pro- 
tects property in slaves in the very territorv\ In 
1820, when the question of prohibition came up, Mr. 
Madison declared it was not warranted by the Con- 
stitution, and Jefferson denounced its abettors as 



i64 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

enemies of the human race. Here is the court ; here 
are our fathers ; here is cotemporaneous exposition 
for fifty years, all asserting our right. The Black 
Republican party say, 'We care not for your prece- 
dents or practices; we have progressive politics as 
well as a progressive religion. Behold Spooner! 
We care not for the fathers; we care not for the 
judges.' They have said more : their leaders on this 
floor have said they will get rid of the court as 
James II got rid of the honest judges when they 
decided against the dispensing power of the Crown. 
One set refused ; he turned them out and put in an- 
other ; they refused ; he turned them out and got an- 
other. They mocked the Constitution and the laws, 
and decided for the Crown. What was the result? 
He became, and justly, a wanderer and an outcast, 
and his posterity were wanderers and outcasts, 
houseless and homeless. The heir of his race — the 
son of Mary of Modena, the last scion of a per- 
fidious race — died a pensioner of Rome. Read, then, 
the record of this reckless king, and profit by his ex- 
ample. When you appoint judges to make deci- 
sions, you make a mockery of all justice, and of all 
decisions with freemen everywhere. Our ancestors 
told us how to treat such oppression in 1688. We 
have not forgotten the lesson. 

"To come back from this digression, I will now 
read your proclamation of outlawry from the Chi- 
cago platform, to wit : 

" 'That the normal condition of the territory of the United 
States is that of freedom ; that as our republican fathers, when 
they had abolished slavery in our national territory, ordained 
that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
ivithout due process of law, it becomes our duty, by congres- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 165 

sional legislation, whenever such legislation becomes neces- 
sary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all 
attempts to violate it ; and we deny the authority of Congress, 
of a Territorial Legislature, of any individual or association 
of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Terri- 
tory of the United States.' 

"There you declare that the treaties made by Mr. 
Jefferson in 1803 are null, void, and no law; there 
you declare that the acts by which property in slaves 
was protected and allowed, both by territorial and 
congressional acts, in Florida, in Louisiana, in Ar- 
kansas, in Missouri, in Mississippi, and in Alabama, 
were all null, void, and no law. You declare that 
the decision of the Supreme Court is null, void, and 
no law ; that there is no Constitution but the Chicago 
platform; yet you propose to come here and take 
possession of this Government, and swear to main- 
tain the Constitution with this reading, and you are 
quite astonished at our having any objections to the 
peaceable proceeding — at least the Senator from 
Oregon [Mr. Baker] was, the other day. I suppose 
that orator has just come out of the woods. I do 
not know where he has kept himself, if he has never 
heard any more of this question than he told us. 
But no matter what may be our grievances, the hon- 
orable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] 
says we cannot secede. Well, what can we do ? We 
cannot revolutionize; he will say that is treason. 
What can we do ? Submit ? They say they are the 
strongest, and they will hang us. Very well, I sup- 
pose we are to be thankful for that boon. We will 
take that risk. We will stand by the right ; we will 
take the Constitution ; we will defend it by the sword 
with the halter around our necks. Will that satisfy 



166 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the honorable Senator from Kentucky? You can- 
not intimidate my constituents by talking to them 
about treason. They are ready to fight for the right 
with the rope around their necks, and meet the Black 
Republicans and their allies upon whatever ground 
they may select. Treason; bah! 

"The Black Republicans denounce Mr. Buchanan 
because he has construed the relation of master and 
slave, 'to involve an unqualified property in persons.' 
Mr. Lincoln approves their censure. So far as this 
denounces the language employed by the President, 
it is a simple denial of all property in slaves; but, 
with characteristic knavery, this party put enough of 
falsehood to misrepresent his real meaning. Upon 
the point referred to, the President has gone no 
farther than the Supreme Court ; and his declaration 
may be safely left to judicial vindication. 

"But I have promised to show that Lincoln has 
refused obedience to judicial interpretations of a 
constitutional question. In his speech of loth July, 
1856, he said: 

" 'If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on the 
question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Terri- 
tory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that 
it should.' 

"I omitted to remark in its proper place that not 
only Mr. Lincoln repudiates the propositions which 
I submitted to the committee of thirteen of the Sen- 
ate, but they were all voted against by the five mem- 
bers representing the Black Republican party in the 
Senate of the United States upon the committee of 
thirteen, and I presumed they were not extreme 
men. Some of them, I had been led to believe, were 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 167 

the moderate men who were among, and not of, the 
organization. But every principle which was pro- 
posed received the condemnation of every one of 
them. A resolution involving the same principles, 
introduced by a distinguished colleague of mine in 
the House of Representatives, was voted down, I 
believe, by a unanimous vote of all the members of 
that House belonging to the Republican party. The 
same lesson is taught by every declaration they 
make, even by the treacherous silence which has 
been maintained by their most extreme men on this 
floor and elsewhere, on these subjects, since the be- 
ginning of this session. Probably some of them 
thought it was best to be calm, supposing that per- 
haps the foot which was upon the neck of slavery 
was insecure. Possibly 'the jubilant Senator from 
the Northwest' [Mr. Doolittle] thought the domina- 
tion might not be perpetual, and that it was well to 
bring the coils of power, of place, of armies, of 
navies, and of legality around us, in order to tighten 
our chains before we were alarmed. We understand 
this danger, and we will anticipate it. You will have 
to use your strength, not ours, to rivet our chains; 
spend your own money and your own blood, not 
ours, to consolidate your power. 

"I have, then, established the proposition — it is 
admitted — that you seek to outlaw $4,000,000,000 
of property of our people in the Territories of the 
United States. Is not that a cause of war? Is it a 
grievance that $4,000,000,000 of the property of the 
people should be outlawed in the Territories of the 
United States by the common Government ? What, 
then, is our reliance ? Your treachery to yourselves ? 



i68 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

I will not accept that guarantee. I know you are 
treacherous to us, but I see no reason but justice 
why you should betray each other ; and that will not 
avail you. I think, therefore, you will do what you 
say on that question ; at least there can be no harm in 
my accepting your declarations as true. I believe 
that however hostile nations may be, they take the 
warlike declarations of the enemy as true and suf- 
ficient for their action. Then you have declared, 
Lincoln declares, your platform declares, your peo- 
ple declare, your Legislatures declare — there is one 
voice running through your entire phalanx — that we 
shall be outlawed in the Territories of the United 
States. I say we will not be ; and we are willing to 
meet the issue; and rather than submit to such an 
outlawry, we will defend our territorial rights as we 
would our household gods. 

"But, although I insist upon this perfect equality 
in the Territories, yet, when it was proposed, as I 
understand the Senator from Kentucky now pro- 
poses, that the line of 36° 30' shall be extended, 
acknowledging and protecting our property on the 
south side of that line, for the sake of peace — per- 
manent peace — I said to the committee of thirteen 
and I say here, that, with other satisfactory pro- 
visions, I would accept it. If that or some other 
satisfactory arrangement is not made, I am for im- 
mediate action. We are as ready to fight now as we 
ever shall be. I am willing, however, to take the 
proposition of the Senator as it was understood in 
committee, putting the North and the South on the 
same ground, prohibiting slavery on one side, ac- 
knowledging slavery and protecting it on the other. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 169 

and applying that to all future acquisition, so that 
the whole continent to the north pole shall be settled 
upon the one rule, and to the south pole under the 
other. I will not buy a shameful peace. I will have 
equality or war. Georgia is on the war-path, and 
demands a full and final settlement this time. 

"Yet, not only did your committee refuse that, 
but my distinguished friend from Mississippi [Mr. 
Davis], another moderate gentleman like myself — 
proposed simply to get a recognition that we had the 
right to our own; that man could have property in 
man ; and it met with the unanimous refusal even of 
the most moderate, Union-saving, compromising 
portion of the Republican party. They do not in- 
tend to acknowledge it. How could they? Mr. 
Lincoln says that, according to the Declaration of 
Independence, all men are born free and equal. You 
do not want any fugitive slave law ; all you want is 
a habeas corpus; with this you can set them free in 
Georgia. According to this notion Spooner is right 
in contending that the Federal Constitution author- 
izes the abolition of slavery. Mr. Lincoln thus ac- 
cepts every cardinal principle of the Abolitionists; 
yet he ignorantly puts his authority for abolition 
upon the Declaration of Lidependence, which was 
never made any part of the public law of the United 
States. It is well known that these 'glittering gen- 
eralities' were never adopted into the Constitution 
of the United Sates. 

"And what a spectacle does Mr. Lincoln present 
of the fathers of the Republic by his absurd theory ? 
There sat the representatives of thirteen slavehold- 
ing Colonies, declaring that all men were free and 



170 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

equal, and endowed by the Creator with the same 
rights. You say they meant their slaves. Every 
State then held slaves, and most of the gentlemen 
who were around that board themselves held them. 
Did those fathers, who pledged to God and to man- 
kind their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred hon- 
ors, mean to cheat the human race ? Did they false- 
ly and fraudulently utter that sentiment, and still 
hold on to their slaves as long as they lived ? That 
is the way you construe it. Washington, during all 
his lifetime, held hundreds of slaves. He kept them 
as long as he lived, and left them to his wife, with 
the provision, that after her death, they should be 
free — a very common custom with gentlemen in our 
country w'ho have no immediate descendants, and 
from attachment to their slaves are reluctant to let 
them pass even into the hands of collateral relatives. 
So strong was that sentiment, that my State was 
compelled to pass a law to prohibit emancipation, or 
by this time a large portion of the slaves might have 
been free under the operation of that sentiment. Jef- 
ferson held slaves all his lifetime, and left them to 
his heirs. Madison held them, and they went to his 
heirs. And these men are now quoted as meaning 
to iiiclude their own slaves in the Declaration of In- 
dependence ; and seem, in Republican argument, base 
enough to hold on to 'the sum of all villainies,' to 
rob freemen of their wages, and plunder them to the 
day of their death. With your doctrines, you have 
the audacity to pretend to think well of such men. 
Shall we give you credit for sincerity? 

"Yes, Mr. Lincoln says it is a fundamental prin- 
ciple that all men are entitled to equality in Govern- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 171 

ment everywhere. That idea seems to be a hobby 
of his. Very well ; you not only want to break down 
our constitutional rights; you not only want to up- 
turn our social system ; your people not only steal 
our slaves and make them freemen to vote against 
us ; but you seek to bring an inferior race in a condi- 
tion of equality, socially and politically, with our 
own people. Well, sir, the question of slavery 
moves not the people of Georgia one half as much 
as the fact that you insult their rights as a com- 
munity. You Abolitionists are right when you say 
that there are thousands and tens of thousands of 
men in Georgia, and all over the South, who do not 
own slaves. A very large portion of the people of 
Georgia own none of them. In the mountains, there 
are comparatively but few of them; but no part of 
our people are more loyal to their race and country 
than our bold and brave mountain population : and 
every flash of the electric wires brings me cheering 
news from our mountain tops and our valleys, that 
these sons of Georgia are excelled by none of their 
countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and 
the glory of the Commonwealth. They say, and 
well say : This is our question ; we want no negro 
equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel 
race to degrade our own ; and as one man they 
would meet you upon the border with the sword in 
one hand and the torch in the other. They would 
drive you from our borders, and make you walk over 
the blighted ruins of their fair land. We will tell 
you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must 
be done under our direction and according to our 
will ; our own, our native land shall determine this 



172 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

question and not the Abolitionists of the North. 
That is the spirit of our freemen; beware of them. 
"It was in this spirit of intermeddhng and mis- 
chief that sixty-eight members of your party in the 
other House, and at least one member of the Senate, 
signed a recommendation to circulate as a campaign 
document an infamous publication to excite these 
very non-slaveholders of the South to insurrection 
against their fellow-citizens. I allude to the Helper 
book. This Republican party sometimes say 'We 
are not an abolition party.' Take away their Aboli- 
tionists, and they are nobody. They would be 
beaten in New England. All Abolitionists are Re- 
publicans, whether all Republicans are Abolitionists 
or not. We understand that. There may be per- 
haps an exception to abolition unanimity, and that is 
in regard to one class, an honest class — composed 
of the New England or Boston anti-slavery society, 
headed by Garrison. Garrison looks at it squarely 
and honestly. He says to these very Abolitionists 
of the other sort, the political Abolitionists, 'Your 
Government is a pro-slavery Government; you take 
oaths and you violate them; we will not take these 
oaths, because we will not break them.' That is 
the difference between you and them. One of the 
most able, and eloquent, and well written exposes 
of the position of the Garrison Abolitionists that I 
have seen anywhere is to be found in a late annual 
report of the Massachusetts anti-slavery society; 
and they say that 'the Constitution is a pro-slavery 
instrument which does recognize slavery, and you 
perjure yourselves when you take oaths to support 
it, and break them. We cannot vote, we cannot take 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 173 

office, because we will not take oaths to break them ; 
we cannot vote for you, because we will not vote for 
men who will take oaths and break them.' That is 
an authoritative exposition from this class of Aboli- 
tionists. So it seems that the Abolitionists with 
whom we have to deal are so base that the honest 
Abolitionists themselves will not trust them. 

"I have already adverted to the proposition in re- 
gard to giving up criminals who are charged with 
stealing negroes, and I have referred to the cases of 
Maine, New York, and Ohio. I come now to the 
last specification — the requirement that laws should 
be passed punishing all who aid and abet insurrec- 
tion. These are offenses recognized by the laws of 
nations as inimical to all society; and I will read 
the opinions of an eminent publicist when I get to 
that point. I said that you had aided and abetted 
insurrection. John Brown certainly invaded Vir- 
ginia. John Brown's sympathizers, I presume, are 
not Democrats. Two of the accomplices of John 
Brown fled — one to Ohio, one to Iowa. The Gov- 
ernors of both States refused to give up the fugitives 
from justice. The party maintained them. I am 
aware that, in both cases, pretexts were gotten up, 
to cover the shame of the transaction. I am going 
to show you that their pretexts were hollow, un- 
substantial, not only against constitutional law, but 
against the law of nations. I will show you that it 
was their duty to seize them under the law of na- 
tions, and bring them to their Confederate States, 
or even to a friendly State. The first authority I 
will read is Vattel on the law of nations. If there 
had been any well-founded ground, if the papers 



174 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

had been defective, if the case had been defectively 
stated, what was the general duty of a friendly 
State without any constitutional obligation? This 
general principle is, that one State is bound to re- 
strain its citizens from doing anything tending to 
create disturbance in another State, to foment dis- 
order, to corrupt its citizens, or to alienate its allies. 
Vattel says, page 162 : 

" 'And since the latter [the sovereign] ought not to suffer 
his subjects to molest the subjects of other States, or to do 
them an injury, much less to give open, audacious offense to 
foreign Powers, he ought to compel the transgressor to make 
reparation for the damage or injury, if possible, or to inflict 
on him an exemplary punishment ; or, finally, according to 
the nature and circumstances of the case, to deliver him up to 
the offended State, to be there brought to justice. This_ is 
pretty generally observed with respect to great crimes, which 
are equally contrary to the laws and safety of all nations. 
Assassins, incendiaries, and robbers, are seized everywhere, 
at the desire of the sovereign in whose territories the crime 
was committed, and are delivered up to his justice. The mat- 
ter is carried still farther in States that are more closely con- 
nected by friendsliip and good neighborhood. Even in cases 
of ordinary transgressions, which are only subjects of civil 
prosecution, either with a view to the recovery of damages, 
or the infliction of a slight civil punishment, the subjects of 
two neighboring States are reciprocally obliged to appear be- 
fore the magistrate of the place where they are accused of hav- 
ing failed in their duty. Upon a requisition of that magistrate, 
called letters rogatory, they are summoned in due form by 
their own magistrates, and obliged to appear. An admirable 
institution, by means of which many neighboring States live 
together in peace, and seem to form only one republic ! This 
is in force through all Switzerland. As soon as the letters 
rogatory are issued in form, the superior of the accused is 
boimd to enforce them. It belongs not to him to examine 
whether the accusation be true or false; he is to presume on 
the justice of his neighbors, and not to suffer any doubts on 
his own part to impair an institution so well calculated to 
preserve harmony and good understanding between the States.' 

"That is the law of nations, as declared by one 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 17S 

of its ablest expounders; but, besides, we have this 
principle embodied in the Constitution ; we have 
there the obligation to deliver up fugitives from jus- 
tice; and, though it is in the Constitution, though 
it is sanctioned, as I said, by all ages and all cen- 
turies, by the wise and the good, everywhere, our 
Confederate States are seeking false pretexts to 
evade a plain social duty, in which are involved the 
peace and security of all civil society. If we had 
no Constitution, this obligation would devolve upon 
friendly States. If there were no Constitution, we 
ought to demand it. But instead of giving us this 
protection, we are met with reproaches, reviling, 
tricks, and treachery, to conceal and protect incen- 
diaries and murderers. 

"This man Brown and his accomplices had sym- 
pathizers. Who were they ? One of them, as I have 
before said, who was, according to his public 
speeches, a defender and a laudator of John Brown 
— is Governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of 
that State applauded Brown's heroism, magnified 
his courage, and, no doubt, lamented his ill success. 
Throughout the whole North, public meetings, im- 
mense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors 
of the hero and the conqueror, were awarded to this 
incendiary and assassin. They did not condemn the 
traitor; think you they abhorred the treason? 

"Yet, I repeat, when a distinguished Senator from 
a non-slaveholding State [Mr. Douglas] proposed 
to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, 
Lincoln and his party come before the world and 
say, 'Here is a sedition law.' To carry out the Con- 
stitution, to protect States from invasion and sup- 



176 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

press insurrection, to comply with the laws of the 
United States, is a 'sedition law,' and the chief of 
this party treats it with contempt; yet, under the 
very same clause of the Constitution which war- 
ranted this important bill, you derive your power to 
punish offenses against the laws of nations. Under 
this warrant you have tried and punished our citi- 
zens for meditating the invasion of foreign States. 
You have stopped illegal expeditions. You have de- 
nounced our citizens as pirates, and commended 
them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless enemy. 
"Under this principle alone you protect our 
weaker neighbors of Cuba, Honduras, and Nic- 
aragua. By this alone are we empowered and bound 
to prevent our people from conspiring together, giv- 
ing aid, giving money, or arms, to fit out expedi- 
tions against any foreign nation. Foreign nations 
get the benefit of this protection ; but we are worse 
off in the Union than if we were out of it. Out of 
it, we should have the protection of the neutrality 
laws. Now you can come among us; raids may be 
made; you may put the incendiary's torch to our 
dwellings, as you did last summer for hundreds 
of miles on the frontiers of Texas ; you may do what 
John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to 
your States, you will not punish them ; you will not 
deliver them up. Therefore we stand defenseless. 
We must cut loose from the accursed 'body of this 
death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations. 
Hence we are armed, and hence we will stay so, 
until our rights are respected, and justice is done. 
We must take up arms to get the rights that the 
laws of nations give us. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 177 

"Mr. Lincoln's speech, to which I referred as 
some indication of the jeers and the gibes of this 
'conservative gentleman,' charges us with a multi- 
tude of imaginary offenses : 

" 'This is a natural and apparently adequate means ; but 
what will convince them?' — 

"That he does not intend to hurt us. 

" 'This, and this only : Cease to call slaveholding wrong, 
and join them in calling it right; and this must be done thor- 
oughly ; done in acts as well as words. Silence will not be 
tolerated. We must place ourselves avowedly with them. 
Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced.' 

"I say so too. I say I will not stay in the Union 
that gives me less rights than it gives to a foreign 
nation. I will meet you on this issue. I will have 
these rights in the Union, or I will not stay in it. 

" 'Douglas's new sedition laws must be enacted and en- 
forced' — 

"It must be before I will make peace. 

— " 'suppressing all declarations of hostility to slavery, whether 
made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private.' 

"That is a very adroit way to state the case. We 
have never sought to interfere with your discussion 
of any questions in your own country. The stand- 
ing laws of my own State only punish the words 
and acts that are intended to incite insurrection 
among any class of people. But you write, and 
speak, and form societies, and claim the right to 
become a nest of incendiaries, in order to assail 
your neighbors; and you say you have the right to 
do it under the liberty of speech guaranteed by the 



178 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Constitution. I will not interfere with your rights, 
but you must so use them as not to injure us. 

"You will not regard Confederate obligations; 
you will not regard constitutional obligations ; you 
will not regard your oaths. What, then, am I to 
do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, 
to lie down and submit because political fossils raise 
the cry of the glorious Union? Too long already 
have we listened to this delusive song. We are 
freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We 
have wrongs; I have recounted them. I have dem- 
onstrated that the party now coming into power has 
declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude 
four thousand million of our property from the com- 
mon Territories; that it has declared us under the 
ban of the Empire, and out of the protection of the 
laws of the United States everywhere. They have 
refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection 
by the Federal Power, and the Constitution denies 
to us in the Union the right either to raise fleets or 
armies for our own defense. All these charges I 
have proven by the record ; and I put them before 
the civilized world, and demand the judgment of 
to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven 
itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am con- 
tent, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy 
a cause. We have appealed, time and time again, 
for these constitutional rights. You have refused 
them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights 
as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be, 
just as all our people have said they are; redress 
these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will 
restore fraternity, and peace, and unity, to all of 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 179 

US. Refuse them, and what then? We shall then 
ask you, 'let us depart in peace.' Refuse that, and 
you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing 
upon our banners the glorious words, 'liberty and 
equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave 
and the God of battles for security and tranquillity." 



Farewell Speech of Senator Jefferson Davis, 
U. S. Senator From Mississippi, on the Oc- 
casion OF His Withdrawal From the U. S. 
Senate, January 21, 186 1 



Mr. Davis. "I rise, Mr. President, for the pur- 
pose of announcing to the Senate that I have satis- 
factory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a 
solemn ordinance of her people in convention as- 
sembled, has declared her separation from the 
United States. Under these circumstances, of 
course my functions are terminated here. It has 
seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear 
in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, 
and I will say but very little more. The occasion 
does not invite me to go into argument ; and my 
physical condition would not permit me to do so if it 
were otherwise; and yet it seems to become me to 
say something on the part of the State I here repre- 
sent, on an occasion so solemn as this. 

"It is known to Senators who have served with 
me here, that I have for many years advocated, as 
an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right 
of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if 
I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I 
had thought that Mississippi was acting without 

180 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE i8i 

sufficient provocation, or without an existing neces- 
sity, I should still, under my theory of the Govern- 
ment, because of my allegiance to the State of which 
I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, 
however, may be permitted to say that I do think she 
has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I 
conferred with her people before that act was taken, 
counseled them then that if the state of things which 
they apprehended should exist when the convention 
met, they should take the action which they have 
now adopted, 

"I hope none who hear me will confound this ex- 
pression of mine with the advocacy of the right of a 
State to remain in the Union, and to disregard its 
constitutional obligations by the nullification of the 
law. Such is not my theory. Nullification and se- 
cession, so often confounded, are indeed antagonistic 
principles. Nullification is a remedy which it is 
sought to apply within the Union, and against the 
agent of the States. It is only to be justified when 
the agent has violated his constitutional obligation, 
and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the 
right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the 
other States of the Union for a decision; but when 
the States themselves, and when the people of the 
States, have so acted as to convince us that they will 
not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then 
for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in 
its practical application. 

"A great man who now reposes with his fathers, 
and who has been often arraigned for a want of 
fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine of nulli- 
fication, because it preserved the Union. It was be- 



i82 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

cause of his deep-seated attachment to the Union, 
his determination to find some remedy for existing 
ills short of a severance of the ties which bound 
South Carolina to the other States, that Mr. Cal- 
houn advocated the doctrine of nullification, which 
he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits 
of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only 
to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribu- 
nal of the States for their judgment. 

"Secession belongs to a different class of rem- 
edies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the 
States are sovereign. There was a time when none 
denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a 
better comprehension of the theory of our Govern- 
ment, and the inalienable rights of the people of the 
States, will prevent any one from denying that each 
State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants 
which it has made to any agent whomsoever. 

*T therefore say I concur in the action of the peo- 
ple of Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and 
proper, and should have been bound by their action 
if my belief had been otherwise ; and this brings me 
to the important point which I wish on this last oc- 
casion to present to the Senate. It is by this con- 
founding of nullification and secession that the name 
of a great man, whose ashes now mingle with his 
mother earth, has been invoked to justify coercion 
against a seceded State. The phrase 'to execute the 
laws,' was an expression which General Jackson ap- 
plied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws 
while yet a member of the Union. This is not the 
case which is now presented. The laws are to be 
executed over the United States, and upon the people 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 183 

of the United States. They have no relation to any 
foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least 
it is a great misapprehension of the case, which cites 
that expression for application to a State which has 
withdrawn from the Union. You may make war on 
a foreign State. If it be the purpose of gentlemen, 
they may make war against a State which has with- 
drawn from the Union ; but there are no laws of the 
United States to be executed within the limits of a 
seceded State. A State finding herself in the con- 
dition in which Mississippi has judged she is, in 
which her safety requires that she should provide for 
the maintenance of her rights out of the Union, sur- 
renders all the benefits (and they are known to be 
many), deprives herself of the advantages (they are 
known to be great), severs all the ties of affection 
(and they are close and enduring) which have bound 
her to the Union ; and thus divesting herself of every 
benefit, taking upon herself every burden, she claims 
to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of 
the United States within her limits. 

"I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts 
was arraigned before the bar of the Senate, and 
when then the doctrine of coercion was rife and to 
be applied against her because of the rescue of a 
fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the 
same that it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but 
to show that I am not influenced in my opinion be- 
cause the case is my own, I refer to that time and 
that occasion as containing the opinion which I then 
entertained, and on which my present conduct is 
based. I then said, if Massachusetts, following her 
through a stated line of conduct, chooses to take the 



i84 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

last step which separates her from the Union, it is 
her right to go, and I will neither vote one dollar nor 
one man to coerce her back ; but will say to her, God 
speed, in memory of the kind associations which 
once existed between her and the other States, 

"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it 
has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the 
Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed 
to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present 
decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that 
all men are created free and equal, and this made the 
basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and 
the sacred Declaration of Independence has been in- 
voked to maintain the position of the equality of the 
races. That Declaration of Independence is to be 
construed by the circumstances and purposes for 
which it was made. The communities were declar- 
ing their independence; the people of those com- 
munities were asserting that no man was born — to 
use the language of Mr. Jefferson — booted and 
spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men 
were created equal — meaning the men of the politi- 
cal community; that there was no divine right to 
rule ; that no man inherited the right to govern ; that 
there were no classes by which power and place de- 
scended to families, but that all stations were equally 
within the grasp of each member of the body-politic. 
These were the great principles they announced; 
these were the purposes for which they made their 
declaration; these were the ends to which their 
enunciation was directed. They have no reference 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 185 

to the slave; else, how happened it that among the 
items of arraignment made against George III was 
that he endeavored to do just what the North has 
been endeavoring of late to do — to stir up insurrec- 
tion among our slaves? Had the Declaration an- 
nounced that the negroes were free and equal, how 
was the Prince to be arraigned for stirring up insur- 
rection among them ? And how was this to be enu- 
merated among the high crimes which caused the 
Colonies to sever their connection with the Mother 
Country? When our Constitution was formed, the 
same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we 
find provision made for that very class of persons as 
property; they were not put upon the footing of 
equality with white men — not even upon that of 
paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation 
was concerned, were discriminated against as a 
lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical 
proportion of three-fifths. 

"Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which 
binds us together; we recur to the principles upon 
which our Government was founded ; and when you 
deny them, and when you deny to us the right to 
withdraw from a Government which thus perverted 
threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but 
tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim 
our independence, and take the hazard. This is 
done not in hostility to others, not to injure any sec- 
tion of the country, not even for our own pecuniary 
benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of 
defending and protecting the rights we inherited, 
and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn 
to our children. 



i86 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general 
feeling of my constituents towards yours. I am sure 
I feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North. 
I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp 
discussion there may have been between us, to whom 
I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish 
you well ; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the 
people whom I represent towards those whom you 
represent. I therefore feel that I but express their 
desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful 
relations with you, though we must part. They may 
be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they 
have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse 
may bring disaster on every portion of the country ; 
and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God 
of our fathers, who delivered them from the power 
of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the 
bear ; and thus, putting our trust in God, and in our 
own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate 
the right as best we may. 

"In the course of my service here, associated at 
different times with a great variety of Senators, I 
see now around me some with whom I have served 
long ; there have been points of collision ; but what- 
ever of offense there has been to me, I leave here ; I 
carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever 
offense I have given which has not been redressed, 
or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I 
have. Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer 
you my apology for any pain which, in heat of dis- 
cussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered 
of the remembrance of any injury received, and hav- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 187 

ing discharged the duty of making the only repara- 
tion in my power for any injury offered. 

"Mr. President, and Senators, having made the 
announcement which the occasion seemed to me to 
require, it only remains for me to bid you a final 
adieu." 



Farewell Speeches of Senators Yulee and 
Mallory, U. S. Senators from Florida, on 
the Occasion of their Withdrawal from 
the U. S. Senate, January 22d, 1861 

withdrawal of senators 



Mr. Yulee. "Mr. President, if it is agreeable to 
the Senate — if there is no order pressing before the 
Senate — " 

The Vice-President. "There is a motion now 
pending to take up a certain message of the Presi- 
dent." 

Mr. Yulee. "I was about to state that I was 
desirous during the morning hour (though if it be 
preferred by the Senate I can take some other time) 
to make an announcement to the Senate of a purpose 
which my colleague and myself entertain, and which 
I think might be appropriately made during the 
morning hour. We shall, however, of course, sub- 
mit ourselves to the pleasure of the Senate." 

The Vice-President. "Does the Senator ask 
unanimous consent to make his remarks?" 

Mr. King. "To do what?" 

Mr. Collamer. "We do not understand what 
the purpose is. Perhaps I did not hear." 

188 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 189 

Mr. Wade. "We did not hear what the Senator 
from Florida did say." 

Mr. YuLEE. "We desire to make a communi- 
cation to the Senate, which we suppose to be of a 
privileged nature, and having reference to our con- 
nection with this body." 

Mr. Baker and others. "Certainly." 

Mr. CoLLAMER. "I understand this is a personal 
matter to the gentlemen that they wish to be heard 
about." 

The Vice-President. "Does the Senator from 
Florida ask unanimous consent? The Chair hears 
no objection." 

Mr. YuLEE. "Mr. President, I rise to make 
known to the Senate that in consequence of certain 
proceedings which have lately taken place in the 
State of Florida, my colleague and myself are of 
the opinion that our connection with this body is 
legally terminated. 

"The State of Florida has, through a convention 
of her people duly assembled, decided to recall the 
powers delegated to this Government, and to assume 
the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an 
independent and separate community. 

"I am sure I truly represent her when I say that 
her people have not been insensible to the many 
blessings they have enjoyed under the Constitution 
of the United States, nor to the proper advantages 
of a Union directed to the great purposes of 'estab- 
lishing justice, insuring domestic tranquillity, pro- 
moting the general welfare, and securing the bless- 
ings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.' 
They have held in patriotic reverence the memories 



igo THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

that belong to the Union of American States in its 
origin and progress, and have clung with a fond 
assurance to the hope that its wise plan, and the 
just principles upon which it was based, would 
secure for it a perpetual endurance and transcendent 
usefulness. 

"They have decided that their social tranquillity 
and civil security are jeoparded by a longer con- 
tinuance in the Union, not from the contemplated 
or necessary operation of the Constitution, but from 
the consequences, as they conceive, of an unjust ex- 
ercise of the powers it conferred, and a persistent 
disregard of the spirit of fraternity and equality in 
which it was founded. Recent events have im- 
pressed them with the belief that the peace of their 
homes and the preservation of their community 
interests can only be secured by an immediate with- 
drawal from the dangers of a perverted and hostile 
employment of the powers of the Federal Govern- 
ment. They are not willing to disturb the peace 
of their associates by an inflamed and protracted 
struggle within the Union, for rights they could 
never, with self-respect or safety, surrender, and 
against a policy of administration which, although 
sanctioned and authorized by the late decision of a 
majority of the States, they regard to be hostile 
to their best interests, and violative of the legitimate 
duty and trusts of the Government. They have 
preferred to abandon all the hopes they rested upon 
the common growth and common power of the 
Union, and to assume the serious responsibilities of 
a separate existence and new and untried relations. 
It is only under a deep sense of duty to themselves 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 191 

and their posterity that so important a step has been 
taken, I am sure that the people of Florida will 
ever preserve a grateful memory of their past con- 
nection with this Government, and a just pride in 
the continued development of American society. 
They will also remember that although, to their 
regret, a majority of the people in the States of the 
northern section of the Union have seen their duty 
to lie in a path fatal to the safety of Southern 
society, they have had the sympathies of a large 
array of noble spirits in all those States, whose sense 
of justice, and whose brave efforts to uphold the 
right, have been not the less appreciated, nor will be 
the less remembered, because unsuccessful. 

"We have not been wanting in timely warning 
to our associates of the unhappy tendency of their 
policy. It was in the unhallowed pursuit, as we 
thought, of sectional aggrandizement, and the in- 
dulgence of unregulated sentiments of moral duty, 
that the equilibrium of power between the sections, 
which had been maintained until then, was ruthlessly 
and unwisely destroyed by the legislation of 1850. 
The injustice and danger of those proceedings was 
considered by a large portion of the South to be 
so flagrant, that we resorted to an unusual formality 
in bringing our views and apprehensions to the at- 
tention of the country. Upon our official responsi- 
bility, a number of the Senators, those of Florida 
among them, giving expression to the opinions of 
their constituents, presented a written protest against 
the wrong to which our section was subjected, and 
a fraternal warning against the dangerous tendency 
of the policy which incited to that wrong. That 



192 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

protest was refused a place in the Journals of this 
body, contrary, as we thought, to the express duty 
enjoined by the Constitution ; but it went before the 
public, and I think it proper to recall the attention 
of this body to its contents, in the hour when the 
apprehensions it expressed are fatally realized.* 

* The following is the protest referred to in Mr. Yulee's remarks, 
and which was presented in the Senate by Mr. Hunter on the 14th of 
August, 1850j with a motion for leave to have it spread upon the Jour- 
nal of the Senate: 

"We, the undersigned Senators, deeply impressed with the importance 
of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of the responsibility under 
which we are acting, respectfully submit the following protest against 
the bill admitting California as a State into this Union, and request 
that it may be entered upon the Journal of the Senate. We feel that 
it is not enough to have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught with 
mischief to the Union and the States which we represent, with all the 
resources of argument which we possessed, but that it is also due to 
ourselves, the people whose interests have been intrusted to our care, 
and to posterity, which, even in its most distant generations, may feel 
its consequences, to leave, in whatever form may be most solemn and 
enduring, a memorial of the opposition which we have made to this 
measure, and of the reasons by which we have been governed. Upon 
the pages of a Journal which the Constitution requires to be kept so 
long as the Senate may have an existence, we desire to place the reasons 
upon which we are willing to be judged by generations living and 
yet to come, for our opposition to a bill whose consequences may be 
so durable and portentous as to make it an object of deep interest to 
all who may come after us. 

"We have dissented from this bill because it gives the sanction of 
law, and thus imparts validity of the unauthorized action of a portion 
of the inhabitants of California, by which an odious discrimination is 
made against the property of the fifteen slaveholding States of the 
Union, who are thus deprived of that position of equality which the 
Constitution so manifestly designs, and which constitutes the only sure 
and stable foundation upon which this Union can repose. 

"Because the right of the slaveholding States to a common and equal 
enjoyment of the territory of the Union has been defeated by a system 
of measures which, without the authority of precedent, of law, or of 
the Constitution, were manifestly contrived for that purpose, and which 
Congress must sanction and adopt, should this bill become a law. In 
sanctioning this system of measures, this Government will admit that 
the inhabitants of its Territories, whether permanent or transient, and 
whether lawfully or unlawfully occupying the same, may form a 
State without the previous authority of law; without even the partial 
security of a territorial organization formed by Congress; without any 
legal census or other sufficient evidence of their possessing the number 
of citizens necessary to authorize the representation which they may 
claim, and without any of those safeguards about the ballot-box which 
can only be provided by law, and which are necessary to ascertain 
the true sense of a people. It will admit, too, that Congress, having 
refused to provide a government except upon the condition of exclud- 
ing slavery by law, the executive branch of this Government may, at 
its own discretion, invite such inhabitants to meet in convention 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 193 

"Let me be pardoned, Mr. President, for detain- 
ing the Senate with a further remark. The circum- 
stance that the State of Florida was formed upon 
territory acquired by the United States, and the 
paucity of her numbers, has been occasionally re- 
marked upon. Owing to causes she could not con- 
trol, her settlement has been, until recently, com- 
paratively slow. But her population exceeds that 
of seven of the sixteen States that composed the 
Union when the census of 1790 was taken under 
the new Constitution ; and six of the thirteen orig- 
inal States had fewer numbers when they formed 
the Constitution. Rights of sovereignty and liberty 
depend not upon numbers. 

under such rules as it or its agents may prescribe, and to form a con- 
stitution affecting not only their own rights, but those also of fifteen 
States of the Confederacy, by including territory, with the purpose of 
excluding those States from its enjoyment, and without regard to 
the natural fitness of boundary, or any of the considerations which 
should properly determine the limits of a State. It will also admit 
that the convention thus called into existence by the Executive may 
be paid by him out of the funds of the United States without the 
sanction of Congress, in violation not only of the plain provisions of 
the Constitution, but of those principles of obvious propriety which 
would forbid any act calculated to make that convention dependent upon 
it; and last, but not least, in the series of measures which this Govern- 
ment must adopt, and sanction in passing this bill, is the release of the 
authority of the United States by the Executive alone to a Government 
thus formed, and not presenting even sufficient evidence of its having 
the assent of a majority of the people for whom it was designed. 
With a view of all these considerations, the undersigned are con- 
strained to believe that this Government could never be brought to 
admit a State presenting itself under such circumstances, if it were 
not for the purpose of excluding the people of the slaveholding States 
from all opportunity of settling with their property in that Territory. 

"Because, to vote for a bill passed under such circumstances, would 
be to agree to a principle which may exclude forever hereafter, as it 
does now, the States which we represent, from all enjoyment of the 
common territory of the Union — a principle which destroys the equal 
rights of their constituents, the equality of their States in the Con- 
federacy, the equal dignity of those whom they represent as men and 
as citizens in the eye of the law, and their equal title to the protection 
of the Government and the Constitution. 

"Because the admission of California as a State into the Union 
without any previous reservation assented to by her of the public 
domain, might involve an actual surrender of that domain to, or at all 
events places its future disposal at the mercy of, that State, as no 
reservation in the bill can be binding upon her until she assents to it, 



194 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"It is quite true that her limits comprehend a 
part of the territory to which the title was acquired 
by the United States from Spain. But it is also true 
that a part of the consideration for the cession was 
a reservation to the inhabitants of the right to ad- 
mission into the Federal Union upon terms of equal- 
ity; and it was in view of this right that most of 
the inhabitants remained there. If their number 
has been increased by subsequent immigration, it 
was mostly of citizens from others of the United 
States, who were lineal inheritors of the glories and 
fruits of the American Revolution. 

and as her dissent 'hereafter' would in no manner affect or impair the 
act of her admission. 

"Because all the propositions have been rejected which have been 
made to obtain either a recognition of the right of the slaveholding 
States to a common enjoyment of all the territory of the United States, 
or to a fair division of that Territory between the slaveholding and 
non-slaveholding States of the Union; every effort having failed which 
has been made to obtain a fair division of the Territory proposed to be 
brought in as the State of California. 

"But lastly, we dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest against 
its passage, because, in sanctioning measures so contrary to former 
precedent, to obvious policy, to the spirit and intent of the Constitution 
of the United States, for the purpose of excluding the slaveholding 
States from the Territory thus to be erected into a State, this Govern- 
ment in effect declares that the exclusion of slavery from the terri- 
tory of the United States is an object so high and important as to justify 
a disregard, not only of all the principles of sound policy, but also 
of the Constitution itself. Against this conclusion we must now and 
forever protest, as it is destructive of the safety and liberties of those 
whose rights have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and 
equality of the States which we represent, and must lead, if persisted 
in, to the dissolution of that Confederacy in which the slaveholding 
States have never sought more than equality, and in which they will 
not be content to remain with less. 

"T. M. MASON, ) ... . . 

R. M. T. HUNTER, f y*rgiHia. 

A. P. BUTLER, I o w ^ ;• 

R. B. BARNWELL. 5 ^°"*'' Carolina. 

H. L. TURNEY, Tennessee. 

PIERRE SOULE. Louisiana. 

TEFF'N DAVIS. Mississippi. 

DAVID R. ATCHISON. Missouri. 

t^S?\°u\?E°""°^' i ^^0^^^- 
"Senate Chamber, August 13, 1S50." 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 19S 

"In pursuance of this stipulation, and of the es- 
tabhshed poHcy of the country, they were admitted 
into the Union ; and, in the act of admission, Florida 
was expressly recognized and 'declared to be a 
State,' and 'admitted into the Union on an equal 
footing with the original States in all respects what- 
ever.' 

"In the exercise of her equal right in the Union, 
and moved by a common sympathy with the people 
of the section of which her territory forms the ex- 
treme southern part, and with whose fate her des- 
tiny is indissolubly bound, Florida has resolved to 
withdraw from the present Union. Her course de- 
rives sanction from the important fact that she is 
preceded in it by the chivalrous State which, by a 
spirited act in 1765, became, by acknowledgment of 
a Massachusetts historian, 'The founder of the Un- 
ion.' And her resolution is rendered more fixed 
by the development, since her movement began, of a 
general tendency in the public mind of the majority 
section to a theory of the Constitution, and to prin- 
ciples of construction, which must convert this Gov- 
ernment into an unlimited despotism. She sees fast 
rising above all others the great issue of the right 
of the people of the States to sovereignty and self- 
government within their respective territorial 
boundaries ; and in such an issue she is prepared to 
devote the lives and fortunes of all her people. 

"Although the present means of Florida are ac- 
knowledged to be limited, yet, having once assumed 
the rank of a State, she assumed with its rights its 
duties also, and its responsibilities to her people and 
their posterity. These she must fulfill, according 



196 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

to her best judgment, with all the more jealousy of 
control because weak, but with none the less claim 
on that account to the respect of all true men. 

"Acknowledging, Mr, President, with grateful 
emotions, my obligations for the many courtesies I 
have enjoyed in my intercourse with the gentlemen 
of this body, and with most cordial good wishes for 
their personal welfare, I retire from their midst in 
willing loyalty to the mandate of my State, and 
with full approval of her act." 

Mr. Mallory. "Concurring, as I do, with all 
that my colleague has said, I ask but a brief moment 
to add a word or two further. 

"In retiring from this body, I cannot but feel, 
and I will not forbear the expression of, profound 
regret that existing causes imperatively impel us 
to this separation. When reason and justice shall 
have asserted ascendency over party and passion, 
they will be justly appreciated ; and this Southern 
movement, demanded by considerations dear to free- 
men in every age, will stand proudly vindicated. 

"Throughout her long and patient endurance of 
insult and wrong, the South has clung to the Union 
with unfaltering fidelity ; a fidelity which, while 
nourishing irritation in the hearts of her own sons, 
has but served to nerve the arms of her adversaries. 

"Florida came into the Union fifteen years ago, 
upon an equality with the original States, and their 
rights in the Confederacy are equally her rights. 
She could not, if she would, separate her action from 
her Southern sisters ; and, demanded as her action is, 
by those considerations which a free people can 
never ignore, she would not if she could. From 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 197 

the Union, governed by the Constitution as our 
fathers made it, there breathes not a secessionist 
upon her soil ; but a deep sense of injustice, inequal- 
ity, and insecurity, produced by the causes to which 
I have adverted, is brought home to the reason and 
patriotism of her people; and to secure and main- 
tain those rights which the Constitution no longer 
accords them, they have placed the State of Florida 
out of the Confederacy. 

"In thus turning from the Union to the veiled 
and unknown future, we are neither ignorant nor 
reckless of the lions in our path. We know that 
the prompt and peaceful organization of a prac- 
tical republican government, securing liberty, equal- 
ity, and justice to every citizen, is one of the most 
difficult, as it is one of the most momentous duties 
devolving upon men; and nowhere perhaps upon 
the earth, beyond our own country, could this great 
work be achieved. But so well are human rights 
and national liberty understood by our people; so 
deeply are they imbued with the spirit of freedom 
and knowledge of Government, that were this Re- 
public utterly broken and destroyed, like the shat- 
tered vase of the poet, to whose very fragments the 
scent of the roses still clung, its very ruins breath- 
ing the true spirit of civil and religious liberty, 
would plead for and demand a wise and noble re- 
construction. 

"Whatever may be the immediate results, there- 
fore, of the momentous crisis now upon us, I have 
no fears for the freedom of my countrymen. Nor 
do I admit for a moment that the great American 
experiment of Government has proved or can prove 



198 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

a failure ; but I maintain, on the contrary, that pass- 
ing events should inspire in the hearts of the patriot 
and statesman, not only hope, but confidence. Five 
States have already dissolved their connection v^ith 
the Union ; and throughout the several stages by 
which their people, in their sovereign capacity, have 
reached secession, they have exhibited a calmness 
and deliberation v^hich find no parallel in the his- 
tory of mankind. This is entirely the result of our 
admirable system of independent State Govern- 
ments. And, sir, were this Federal District, with 
Presidents, Congress, Departments, and courts, and 
all the machinery of Federal Government, suddenly 
sunk a thousand fathoms deep, under the admirable 
working of these State Governments the rights and 
liberties of their people would receive no shock or 
detriment. 

"In thus severing our connection with sister 
States, we desire to go in peace, to maintain to- 
wards them an attitude not only of peace, but, if 
possible, of kindness; and it is for them to deter- 
mine whether we shall do so or not; and whether 
commerce, the great pacificator of earth, is to con- 
nect us as producers, manufacturers, and consumers, 
in future friendly relations. If folly, wickedness, 
or pride, shall preclude the hope of peace, they may 
at once rear up difficulties in our path, leading at 
once to what I confess I regard and dread as one 
of the greatest calamities that can befall a nation — 
civil war; a civil war embracing equally North and 
South. But, sir, be our difficulties what they may, 
we stand forth a united people to grapple with and 
to conquer them. Our willingness to shed our blood 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 199 

in this cause is the highest proof we can offer of the 
sincerity of our convictions ; and I warn, nay, I im- 
plore you, not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bour- 
bons, and mistake a nation for a faction; for the 
people of the South, as one man, declare that, sink 
or swim, live or die, they will not, as freemen, sub- 
mit to the degradation of a constrained existence 
under a violated Constitution. But, sir, we desire 
to part from you in peace. From the establishment 
of the Anglo-Saxons upon this continent to this 
hour, they have never, as Colonies or States, shed 
the blood of each other; and I trust we shall be 
spared this great calamity. We seek not to war 
upon, or to conquer you ; and we know that you can- 
not conquer us. Imbrue your hands in our blood, 
and the rains of a century will not wash from them 
the stain, while coming generations will weep for 
your wickedness and folly. 

"In thus leaving the Senate, and returning to my 
own State, to pursue with unfaltering head and 
heart that path, be it gloomy or bright, to which 
her honor and interest may lead, I cannot forbear 
the acknowledgment of the kindness and courtesy 
which I have ever received from many of the gentle- 
men of the Opposition; Senators to whom I am in- 
debted for much that I shall cherish through life 
with pleasure, and toward whom I entertain none 
but sentiments of kindness and respect. And I 
trust, sirs, that when we next confront each other, 
whether at this bar or that of the just God, who 
knows the hearts of all, our lips shall not have ut- 
tered a word, our hands shall not have committed 
an act, directed against the blood of our people. 



200 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

"On this side of the Chamber, we leave, with pro- 
found regret, those whom we will cherish in our 
hearts, and whose names will be hallowed by our 
children. One by one, we have seen the representa- 
tives of the true and fearless friends of the Constitu- 
tion fall at our side, until hardly a forlorn hope re- 
mains ; and whatever may be our destiny, the future, 
with all of life's darker memories, will be bright- 
ened by the recollection of their devotion to the true 
principles of our Government, and of that wealth 
of head and heart in their intercourse with us which 
has endeared them to us and to ours forever." 



Farewell Speeches of Senators Clay and 
FiTZPATRiCK, U. S. Senators from Alabama, 
ON the Occasion of their Withdrawal from 
THE U. S. Senate, January 22d, 1861 



Mr. Clay. "I rise to announce, in behalf of my 
colleague and myself, that the people of Alabama, 
assembled in convention at their capitol on the nth 
of this month, have adopted an ordinance whereby 
they withdrew from the Union, formed under a 
compact styled the Constitution of the United 
States, resume the powers delegated to it, and as- 
sume their separate station as a sovereign and inde- 
pendent people. This is the act, not of faction or 
of party, but of the people. True, there is a re- 
spectable minority of that convention who opposed 
this act, not because they desired to preserve the 
Union, but because they wished to secure the co- 
operation of all, or of a majority, of the Southern 
or of the planting States. There are many co- 
operationists, but I think not one unionist in the 
convention ; all are in favor of withdrawing from 
the Union. I am therefore warranted in saying that 
this is the act of the freemen of Alabama. 

"In taking this momentous step, they have not 
acted hastily or unadvisedly. It is not the erup- 



201 



202 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

tion of sudden, spasmodic, and violent passion. It 
is the conclusion they have reached after years of 
bitter experience of enmity, injustice, and injury, at 
the hands of their Northern brethren ; after long 
and painful reflection; after anxious debate and 
solemn deliberation ; and after argument, persuasion, 
and entreaty have failed to secure them their con- 
stitutional rights. Instead of causing surprise and 
incurring censure, it is rather matter of amazement, 
if not reproach, that they have endured so much and 
so long, and have deferred this act of self-defense 
until to-day. 

"It is now nearly forty-two years since Alabama 
was admitted into the Union. She entered it, as 
she goes out of it, while the Confederacy was in 
convulsions, caused by the hostility of the North 
to the domestic slavery of the South. Not a decade, 
nor scarce a lustrum, has elapsed, since her birth, 
that has not been strongly marked by proofs of the 
growth and power of that anti-slavery spirit of the 
Northern people which seeks the overthrow of that 
domestic institution of the South, which is not only 
the chief source of her prosperity, but the very basis 
of her social order and State polity. It is to-day the 
master spirit of the Northern States, and had, be- 
fore the secession of Alabama, of Mississippi, of 
Florida, or of South Carolina, severed most of the 
bonds of the Union. It denied us Christian com- 
munion, because it could not endure what it styles 
the moral leprosy of slaveholding ; it refused us per- 
mission to sojourn, or even to pass through the 
North, with our property; it claimed freedom for 
the slave if brought by his master into a Northern 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 203 

State; it violated the Constitution and treaties and 
laws of Congress, because designed to protect that 
property; it refused us any share of lands acquired 
mainly by our diplomacy and blood and treasure; 
it refused our property any shelter or security be- 
neath the flag of a common Government ; it robbed 
us of our property, and refused to restore it; it re- 
fused to deliver criminals against our laws, who fled 
to the North with our property or our blood upon 
their hands; it threatened us, by soljemn legislative 
acts, with ignominious punishment if we pursued 
our property into a Northern State; it murdered 
Southern men when seeking the recovery of their 
property on Northern soil; it invaded the borders 
of Southern States, poisoned their wells, burnt their 
dwellings, and murdered their people; it denounced 
us by deliberate resolves of popular meetings, of 
party conventions, and of religious and even legisla- 
tive assemblies, as habitual violators of the laws of 
God and the rights of humanity; it exerted all the 
moral and physical agencies that human ingenuity 
can devise or diabolical malice can employ to heap 
odium and infamy upon us, and to make us a by- 
word of hissing and of scorn throughout the civil- 
ized world. Yet we bore all this for many years, 
and might have borne it for many more, under the 
oft-repeated assurance of our Northern friends, and 
the too fondly cherished hope that these wrongs and 
injuries were committed by a minority party, and 
had not the sanction of the majority of the people, 
who would, in time, rebuke our enemies, and re- 
dress our grievances. 

"But the fallacy of these promises and folly of 



204 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

our hopes have been too clearly and conclusively 
proved in late elections, especially the last two presi- 
dential elections, to permit us to indulge longer in 
such pleasing delusions. The platform of the Re- 
publican party of 1856 and i860 we regard as a 
libel upon the character and a declaration of war 
against the lives and property of the Southern peo- 
ple. No bitterer or more offensive calumny could be 
uttered against them than is expressed in denounc- 
ing their system of slavery and polygamy as 'twin 
relics of barbarism.' It not only reproaches us as 
unchristian and heathenish, but imputes a sin and 
a crime deserving universal scorn and universal 
enmity. No sentiment is more insulting or more 
hostile to our domestic tranquillity, to our social 
order, and our social existence, than is contained 
in the declaration that our negroes are entitled to 
liberty and equality with the white man. It is in 
spirit, if not effect, as strong an incitement and 
invocation to servile insurrection, to murder, arson, 
and other crimes, as any to be found in abolition lit- 
erature. 

"And to aggravate the insult which is offered us 
in demanding equality with us for our slaves, the 
same platform denies us equality with Northern 
white men or free negroes, and brands us as an 
inferior race, by pledging the Republican party to 
resist our entrance into the Territories with our 
slaves, or the extension of slavery, which — as its 
founders and leaders truly assert — must and will ef- 
fect its extermination. To crown the climax of in- 
sult to our feelings and menace of our rights, this 
party nominated to the Presidency a man who not 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 205 

only indorses the platform, but promises, in his zeal- 
ous support of its principles, to disregard the judg- 
ments of your courts, the obligations of your Consti- 
tution, and the requirements of his official oath, by 
approving any bill prohibiting slavery in the Terri- 
tories of the United States. 

"A large majority of the Northern people have 
declared at the ballot-box their approval of the 
platform and the candidates of that party in the 
late presidential election. Thus, by the solemn ver- 
dict of the people of the North, the slaveholding 
communities of the South are 'outlawed, branded 
with ignominy, consigned to execration, and ulti- 
mate destruction.' 

"Sir, are we looked upon as more or less than 
men? Is it expected that we will or can exercise 
that godlike virtue which 'beareth all things, be- 
lieveth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
things;' which teaches us to love our enemies, and 
bless them that curse us? Are we devoid of the 
sensibilities, the sentiments, the passions, the reason, 
and the instincts of mankind? Have we no pride of 
honor, no sense of shame, no reverence of our an- 
cestors, no care of our posterity, no love of home, 
or family, or friends? Must we confess our base- 
ness, discredit the fame of our sires, dishonor our- 
selves, degrade our posterity, abandon our homes, 
and flee from our country, all for the sake of the 
Union? Must we agree to live under the ban of 
our own Government? Must we acquiesce in the 
inauguration of a President, chosen by confederate, 
but unfriendly. States, whose political faith con- 
strains him, for his conscience and country's sake, 



2o6 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

to deny us our constitutional rights, because elected 
according to the forms of the Constitution? Must 
we consent to live under a Government which we 
believe will henceforth be controlled and adminis- 
tered by those who not only deny us justice and 
equality, and brand us as inferiors, but whose 
avowed principles and policy must destroy our do- 
mestic tranquillity, imperil the lives of our wives 
and children, degrade and dwarf, and ultimately de- 
stroy, our State? Must we live, by choice or com- 
pulsion, under the rule of those who present us the 
dire alternative of an 'irrepressible conflict' with 
the Northern people in defense of our altars and 
our firesides, or the manumission of our slaves, and 
the admission of them to social and political equal- 
ity? No, sir, no! The freemen of Alabama have 
proclaimed to the world that they will not ; and have 
proved their sincerity by seceding from the Union, 
and hazarding all the dangers and difficulties of a 
separate and independent station among the nations 
of the earth. 

"They have learned from history the admonitory 
truth, that the people who live under Governors ap- 
pointed against their consent by unfriendly foreign 
or confederate States, will not long enjoy the bless- 
ings of liberty, or have the courage to claim them. 
They feel that were they to consent to do so, they 
would lose the respect of their foes and the sym- 
pathy of their friends. They are resolved not to 
trust to the hands of their enemies the measure of 
their rights. They intend to preserve for them- 
selves, and to transmit to their posterity, the free- 
dom they received from their ancestors, or perish 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 207 

in the attempt. Cordially approving this act of my 
Mother State, and acknowledging no other al- 
legiance, I shall return, like a true and loyal son, to 
her bosom, to defend her honor, maintain her rights, 
and share her fate." 

Mr. FiTZPATRiCK. "Mr. President, I rise merely 
to add, that having had an opportunity of knowing 
beforehand the sentiments which my colleague has 
expressed; and believing that they fairly represent 
the feelings, opinions, and purposes of our constit- 
uents, and correctly explain the reason aiid causes 
of their late action, he was fully warranted in say- 
ing he had my full concurrence in the views which 
he has just submitted. I therefore deem it unneces- 
sary, if not improper, to abuse the privilege which 
the courtesy of the Senate accords to me, by further 
remarks. I feel that I am bound by the act of Ala- 
bama, and cannot claim the rights and privileges 
of a member of this body. I acknowledge no loyalty 
to any other power than that of my sovereign State ; 
and shall return to her with the purpose to sustain 
her action and to share her fortunes, for weal or 
woe." 



Farewell Speech of Senator Alfred Iverson, 
U. S. Senator from Georgia, on the Occa- 
sion OF His Withdrawal 

withdrawal of a senator 



Mr. Iverson. "I send to the Secretary a com- 
munication addressed to the Senate, which I ask to 
have read, and then I propose to submit a few re- 
marks." 

The Secretary read the following communication : 

" ' W^ASHiNGToN CiTY, January 28, 1861. 
" 'To the Senate of the United States: 

" ' The undersigned has received official information that, 
on the 19th instant, a convention of the people of Georgia, 
recently assembled, and now in session, passed the following 
ordinance : 

" ' " An ordinance to dissolve the union between the State 
of Georgia and other States united with her under a compact 
of government, entitled the 'Constitution of the United States 
of America.' 

" ' " We, the people of the State of Georgia, in convention 
assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared 
and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by the people of 
the State of Georgia in convention on the 2d day of January, 
in the year of our Lord 1788, when the Constitution of the 
United States of America was assented to, ratiiied, and 
adopted; and also all acts and parts of acts of the General 
Assembly of this State, ratifying and adopting amendments 
of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and 
abrogated. 

" ' " We do further declare and ordain, that the Union now 

208 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 209 

subsisting between the State of Georgia and other States, 
under the name of the United States of America, is hereby 
dissolved ; and that the State of Georgia is in the full pos- 
session and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which 
belong and appertain to a free and independent State." 

" ' The undersigned, recognizing the validity of said ordi- 
nance, and the fact that the State which he, in part, repre- 
sents in the Senate of the United States, has withdrawn 
from the Federal Union, and is now a separate, sovereign, 
and independent State, does not feel at liberty any longer to 
take part in the proceedings of the Senate, and shall this day 
withdraw from the body. 

" ' Very respectfully, 

"'ALFRED IVERSON.'" 

Mr. IvERSON. "The paper just read by the Clerk 
informs the Senate of what has already been an- 
nounced to the public in unofficial form, that the 
State of Georgia, by the solemn act of her sovereign 
convention, has withdrawn from the Federal Union. 
She is no longer one of the United States of Amer- 
ica, but has resumed all the powers heretofore 
granted by her to the Federal Government, and as- 
serted her independence as a separate and sovereign 
State. In performing this important and solemn 
act, she has been influenced by a deliberate and firm 
conviction that her safety, her interest, and her 
honor, demanded it. The opinion of her people has 
been gradually tending to this point for the last ten 
years, and recent events have strengthened and 
confirmed it. An overwhelming majority of her 
people have, under the sanction of regularity and 
law, elected delegates to a convention, and expressed 
in that election a determination to withdraw from 
the Federal Union ; and the convention, by a like de- 
cisive majority, and in conformity with the popular 
will, has passed an ordinance of secession. Georgia 



210 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

is one of six States which, within less than sixty 
days, have dissolved their connection with the Fed- 
eral Union, and declared their separate independ- 
ence. An election for delegates to a convention now 
in session of another State, is known to have re- 
sulted in favor of the same fixed determination, and 
steps are now in progress by all these States to form 
a Confederacy of their own. In a few weeks at 
furthest, a provincial government will be formed 
by them, with ample powers for their own defense 
— with power to enter into negotiations with other 
nations, to make war, conclude peace, form treaties, 
and generally to do all other things which inde- 
pendent nations may of right do. Provision will be 
made for the admission of other States into the 
new Union ; and it is confidently believed that, 
within a few months, all the slaveholding States of 
the late Confederacy of the United States will be 
united together in a bond of union far more homo- 
geneous, and therefore more stable, than the one 
now being dissolved. 

"I content myself, Mr. President, with a state- 
ment of these facts and these conclusions without 
making an argument to justify or defend them. 
I have only to say, that this action of my own State, 
and of her immediate Southern neighbors and sis- 
ters, meets the approval of my well-considered and 
deliberate judgment ; and as one of her native sons 
and loyal subjects, I shall cheerfully and joyously 
cast my lot with her and them, and, sink or swim, 
live or die, I shall be of and with her and them to 
the last. Sir, with the secession of the Southern 
States, either in whole or in part, and the forma- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 211 

tion of a Southern Confederacy, two grave and 
momentous alternatives will devolve upon the Fed- 
eral Government and the remaining States which 
shall compose the Federal Union. You may ac- 
quiesce in the revolution, and acknowledge the in- 
dependence of the new Confederacy, or you may 
make war upon the seceding States and attempt 
to force them back into a Union with you. If you 
acknowledge our independence, and treat us as one 
of the nations of the earth, you can have friendly 
intercourse with us ; you can have an equitable divi- 
sion of the public property and of the existing pub- 
lic debt of the United States. If you make war 
upon us, we will seize and hold all the public prop- 
erty within our borders or within our reach, and 
we will never pay one dollar of the public debt. 
War, by the laws of nations, extinguishes all pub- 
lic and private obligations between the contending 
States, and the individual citizens who compose 
them. The first Federal gun fired upon the seced- 
ing States; the first drop of blood of any of their 
people shed by Federal troops, will cancel every 
public and private obligation of the South which 
may be due either to the Federal Government or to 
the Northern people. 

"We care not in what shape or form, or under 
what pretexts, you attempt coercion. We shall con- 
sider and treat all and every effort to assert your 
authority over us as acts of war, and shall meet and 
resist them. You may send your armies to invade 
us by land; your ships to blockade our ports, and 
destroy our trade and commerce with other nations. 
You may abolish our ports of entry by act of Con- 



212 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

gress, and attempt to collect your Federal revenues 
by ships of war. You may do all or any of these or 
similar acts. They will be acts of war, and will be 
so understood and treated; and in whatever shape 
you attack us, we will fight you. You boast of 
your superior numbers and your greater strength. 
Remember that 'the race is not always to the swift, 
nor the battle to the strong.' You have your hun- 
dreds of thousands of fighting men. So have we; 
and, fighting upon our own soil, to preserve our 
rights, vindicate our honor, and defend our homes 
and firesides, our wives and children, from the in- 
vader, we shall not be easily conquered. You may 
possibly overrun us, desolate our fields, burn our 
dwellings, lay our cities in ruins, murder our people, 
and reduce us to beggary; but you cannot subdue 
or subjugate us to your Government or your will. 
Your conquest, if you gain one, will cost you a hun- 
dred thousand lives, and more than a hundred mil- 
lion dollars. Nay, more, it will take a standing 
army of a hundred thousand men, and millions of 
money annually, to keep us in subjection. You may 
whip us, but zve will not stay whipped. We will rise 
again and again to vindicate our right to liberty, 
and to throw off your oppressive and accursed yoke, 
and never cease the mortal strife until our whole 
white race is extinguished and our fair land given 
over to desolation. You will have ships-of-war, 
and we may have none. You may blockade our 
ports and lock up our commerce. We can live, if 
need be, without commerce. But when you shut 
out our cotton from the looms of Europe, we shall 
see whether other nations will not have something 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 213 

to say and something to do on that subject. 'Cotton 
is king,' and it will find means to raise your block- 
ade and disperse your ships. 

"Mr. President, I know that hopes are enter- 
tained, and great efforts are being made to retain 
the border slaveholding States in the present Fed- 
eral Union. Let coercive measures be commenced 
against the Southern Confederacy, or any of the 
seceding States, no matter in what form they may 
be adopted, and all such hopes and efforts will van- 
ish into thin air. The first act of Federal legisla- 
tion looking to coercion — the first Federal gun fired 
— the first Federal ship which takes her station off a 
Southern port to enforce the collection of the Fed- 
eral revenues — w411 bring all the other Southern 
States, including even Maryland — laggard as she 
seems to be in the vindication of Southern Independ- 
ence — into an immediate alliance and union with 
their more Southern sisters ; and thus united, they 
wall resist and defy all your efforts to subdue them. 
There are those, Mr. President, who, surrendering 
all hope of preventing a disruption of the Union, and 
recognizing the existing fact of its dissolution, yet 
hope to see it reconstructed. Sir, war between the 
two sections will forever close the door to such a 
project. I will not say, sir, that the Southern 
States, if let alone, ever after they have formed a 
separate Confederacy, will not listen respectfully to 
propositions of reconstruction. Let the North make 
them, and we will consider them. The Southern 
people have heretofore cherished a warm and sincere 
attachment and reverence for the Union, and noth- 
ing but a stern conviction of the necessity and 



214 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

propriety of leaving it, and forming a safer and 
more perfect Union, would have driven them to the 
alternative of separation from it. When they see 
(if it shall not be too long deferred) a returning 
sense of justice and fraternal feelings in the North- 
ern mind and heart, and can find sufficient and re- 
liable guarantees for the protection and permanent 
enjoyment of their equality and rights in the Union, 
they may, perhaps, reconsider their present action, 
and rejoin their former confederates, 

"For myself, sir, I am free to declare that, unless 
my opinions shall be greatly changed, I shall never 
agree to the reconstruction of the Federal Union. 
The Rubicon is passed; and it shall never, with my 
consent, be recrossed. But in this sentiment I may 
be overruled by the people of my State, and of the 
other Southern States. I may safely say, however, 
that nothing will satisfy them or bring them back, 
short of a full and explicit recognition and guar- 
antee of the safety of their institution of domestic 
slavery and the protection of the constitutional 
rights for which in the Union they have been so 
long contending, and a denial of which, by their 
Northern confederates, has forced them into their 
present attitude of separate independence. 

"And now, Mr. President, it remains for me only 
to express my grateful acknowledgments and thanks 
for the uniform courtesy and kindness with which 
I have been treated by all those Senators with whom 
I have had official or social relations during my serv- 
ice in this body ; and wishing them each and all long 
life, prosperity, and happiness, I bid them farewell." 



Farewell Speech of Senator Slidell of Lou- 
isiana, ON THE Occasion of His Withdrawal 
FROM THE U. S. Senate, February 4, 1861 

WITHDRAWAL OF A SENATOR 



Mr. Slidell. "I send to the Secretary a paper, 
which I desire to have read." 

The Secretary read, as follows: 

"An Ordinance to dissolve the union between the State of 
Louisiana and other States united with her, under the com- 
pact entitled 'The Constitution of the United States of 
America.' 

"We, the people of the State of Louisiana, in convention 
assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared 
and ordained, that the ordinance passed by us in convention 
on the 22d day of November, in the year 1811, whereby the 
Constitution of the United States of America, and the 
amendments of said Constitution, were adopted, and all laws 
and ordinances by which the State of Louisiana became a 
member of the Federal Union, be, and the same are hereby, 
repealed and abrogated ; and that the union now subsisting 
between Louisiana and other States, under the name of the 
'United States of America,' is hereby dissolved. 

"We do further declare and ordain, that the State of Lou- 
isiana hereby resumes all rights and powers heretofore del- 
egated to the Government of the United States of America; 
that her citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Gov- 
ernment; and that she is in full possession and exercise of 
all those rights of sovereignty which appertain to a free and 
independent State. 

"We do further declare and ordain, that all rights acquired 

ai5 



2i6 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

and vested under the Constitution of the United States, or 
any act of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this 
State and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain 
in force and have the same effect as if this ordinance had not 
been passed. 

"The undersigned hereby certifies that the above ordinance 
is a true copy of the original ordinance adopted this day by 
the convention of the State of Louisiana. 

"Given under my hand and the great seal of Louisiana, at 
Baton Rouge this 26th day of the month of January, in the 
year of our Lord 1861. 

"[l. s.] a. MOUTON, 

"President of the Convention. 

"J. Thomas Wheat, Secretary of the Convention." 

Mr. Slidell. "Mr. President, the document 
which the Secretary has just read, and which places 
on the files of the Senate official information that 
Louisiana has ceased to be a component part of these 
once United States, terminates the connection of my 
colleagne and myself with this body. The occasion, 
however, justifies, if it does not call for, some part- 
ing words to those whom we leave behind, some 
forever, others we trust to meet again and to partici- 
pate with them in the noble task of constructing and 
defending a new Confederacy; which, if it may want 
at first the grand proportions and vast resources of 
the old, will still possess the essential elements of 
greatness, a people bold, hardy, homogeneous in in- 
terests and sentiments, a fertile soil, an extensive 
territory, the capacity and the will to govern them- 
selves through the forms and in the spirit of the 
Constitution under which they have been born and 
educated. Besides all these, they have an advantage 
which no other people seeking to change the Govern- 
ment under which they had before lived have ever 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 21; 

enjoyed; they have to pass through no intervening 
period of anarchy; they have in their several State 
Governments, already shaped to their hands, every- 
thing necessary for the preservation of order, the ad- 
ministration of justice, and the protection of their 
soil and their property from foreign or domestic 
violence. They can consult with calmness and act 
with deliberation on every subject, either of imme- 
diate interest or future policy. 

"But, if we do not greatly mistake the prevailing 
sentiment of the Southern mind, no attempt will be 
made to improve the Constitution; we shall take it 
such as it is; such as has been found sufficient for 
our security and happiness, so long as its true intent 
and spirit lived in the hearts of a majority of the 
people of the free States, and controlled the action 
not only of the Federal but of the State Legislatures. 
We will adopt all laws not locally inapplicable or 
incompatible with our new relations ; we will recog- 
nize the obligations of all existing treaties — those 
respecting the xA.frican slave trade included. We 
shall be prepared to assume our just proportion of 
the national debt ; to account for the cost of all the 
forts and other property of the United States, which 
we have been compelled to seize in self-defense, if 
it should appear that our share of such expenditure 
has been greater than in other sections; and above 
all, we shall, as well from the dictates of natural 
justice and the principles of international law as of 
political and geographical affinities and of mutual 
pecuniary interests, recognize the right of the in- 
habitants of the valley of the Mississippi and its 
tributaries to its free navigation; we will guarantee 



2i8 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

to them a free interchange of all agricultural produc- 
tions without impost, tax duty, or toll of any kind ; 
the free transit from foreign countries of every 
species of merchandise, subject only to such regu- 
lations as may be absolutely necessary for the pro- 
tection of any revenue system we may establish, and 
for purposes of police. 

"As for such States of the Union as may not 
choose to unite their destinies with ours, we shall 
consider them, as we shall all other foreign nations, 
'enemies in war, in peace, friends.' We wish and 
we hope to part with them amicably; and, so far 
as depends on us, they shall have no provocation to 
pursue a hostile course ; but in this regard we, from 
the necessities of the case, can only be passive; it 
will be for the people of the non-slaveholding States 
to decide this momentous question. This declara- 
tion, however, requires some qualification. Could 
the issue be fairly presented to the people of those 
States, we should have little doubt of a peaceful 
separation, with the possibility of a complete, and 
the probability of a partial, reconstruction on a 
basis satisfactory to us and honorable to them ; but, 
with the present representations in either branch of 
Congress, we see nothing to justify our indulging 
any such expectation. We must be prepared to 
resist coercion, whether attempted by avowed ene- 
mies, or by a hand heretofore supposed friendly, by 
open war, or under the more insidious, and, there- 
fore, more dangerous pretext of enforcing the laws, 
protecting public property, or collecting the revenue. 
We shall not cavil about words, or discuss legal and 
technical distinctions; we shall consider that one as 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 219 

equivalent to the other, and shall be prepared to act 
accordingly. Utroque arbitrio parati. You will 
find us ready to meet you with the outstretched 
hand of fellowship, or in the mailed panoply of war, 
as you may will it; elect between these alternatives. 
"We have no idea that you will even attempt to 
invade our soil with your armies ; but we acknowl- 
edge your superiority on the sea, at present, in some 
degree accidental, but in the main, natural, and per- 
manent, until we shall have acquired better ports 
for our marine. You may, if you will it, persist 
in considering us bound to you during your good 
pleasure; you may deny the sacred and indefeasible 
right, we will not say of secession, but of revolu- 
tion — ay, of rebellion, if you choose so to call our 
action — the right of every people to establish for 
itself that form of Government which it may, even 
in its folly, if such you deem it, consider best calcu- 
lated to secure its safety and promote its welfare. 
You may ignore the principles of our immortal 
Declaration of Independence; you may attempt to 
reduce us to subjection, or you may, under color of 
enforcing your laws or collecting your revenue, 
blockade our ports. This will be war, and we shall 
meet it, with different but equally efficient weapons. 
We will not permit the consumption or introduction 
of any of your manufactures ; every sea will swarm 
with our volunteer militia of the ocean, with the 
striped bunting floating over their heads, for we do 
not mean to give up that flag without a bloody strug- 
gle, it is ours as much as yours; and although for 
a time more stars may shine on your banner, our 
children, if not we, will rally under a constellation 



220 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

more numerous and more resplendent than yours. 
You may smile at this as an impotent boast, at 
least for the present, if not for the future ; but if we 
need ships and men for privateering, we shall be 
amply supplied from the same sources as now al- 
most exclusively furnish the means for carrying on, 
with such unexampled vigor, the African slave trade 
— New York and New England. Your mercantile 
marine must either sail under foreign flags or rot 
at your wharves. 

"But, pretermitting these remedies, we will pass 
to another equally efficacious. Every civilized 
nation now is governed in its foreign relations by 
the rule of recognizing Governments 'de facto.' 
You alone invoke the doctrine of the 'de jure,' or 
divine right of lording it over an unwilling people 
strong enough to maintain their power within their 
own limits. How long, think you, will the great 
naval powers of Europe permit you to impede their 
free intercourse with their best customers for their 
various fabrics, and to stop the supplies of the great 
staple which is the most important basis of their 
manufacturing industry, by a mere paper blockade? 
You were, with all the wealth and resources of this 
once great Confederacy, but a fourth or fifth rate 
naval power, with capacities, it is true, for large, 
and in a just quarrel, almost indefinite, expansion. 
What will you be when not merely emasculated by 
the withdrawal of fifteen States, but warred upon by 
them with active and inveterate hostility? 

"But enough, perhaps somewhat too much of this. 
We desire not to speak to you in terms of bravado 
or menace. Let us treat each other as men, who, 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 221 

determined to break off unpleasant, incompatible, 
and unprofitable relations, cease to bandy words, 
and mutually leave each other to determine whether 
their differences shall be decided by blows or by the 
code which some of us still recognize as that of 
honor. We shall do with you as the French guards 
did with the English at the battle of Fontenoy. In 
a preliminary skirmish, the French and English 
guards met face to face; the English guards cour- 
teously saluted their adversaries by taking off their 
hats; the French returned the salute with equal 
courtesy. Lord Hay, of the English guards, cried 
out, in a loud voice: 'Gentlemen of the French 
guards, fire.' Count D'Auteroche replied in the 
same tone: 'Gentlemen, we never fire first.' The 
English took them at their word, and did fire first. 
Being at close quarters, the effect was very destruc- 
tive, and the French were, for a time, thrown into 
some disorder ; but the fortunes of the day were soon 
restored by the skill and courage of Marshal Saxe, 
and the English, under the Duke of Cumberland, 
suffered one of the most disastrous defeats which 
their military annals record. Gentlemen, we will 
not fire first. 

"We have often seen it charged that the present 
movement of the Southern States is merely the con- 
summation of a fixed purpose, long entertained by 
a few intriguers for the selfish object of personal 
aggrandizement. There never was a greater error 
— if we were not about to part, we should say a 
grosser or more atrocious calumny. Do not deceive 
yourselves; this is not the work of political man- 
agers, but of the people. As a general rule, the in- 



222 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

stincts of the masses, and the sagacity of those who, 
in private Hfe, had larger opportunities for observa- 
tion and reflection, had satisfied them for the neces- 
sity of separation long before their accustomed party 
leaders were prepared to avow it. We appeal to 
every Southern Senator yet remaining here, whether 
such be not the case in his own State. Of its truth, 
we can give no stronger illustration than the vote 
in the Louisiana convention. Of one hundred and 
thirty members, every delegate being in his seat, 
one hundred and thirteen voted for immediate seces- 
sion; and of the seventeen who voted against it, 
there were not more than four or five who did not 
admit the necessity of separation, and only differed 
as to the time and mode of its accomplishment. 

"Nor is the mere election, by the forms of the 
Constitution, of a President distasteful to us, the 
cause, as it is so often and so confidently asserted, 
of our action. It is this : we all consider the elec- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln, with his well-known antece- 
dents and avowed principles and purposes, by a 
decided majority over all other candidates com- 
bined in every non-slaveholding State on this side 
of the Pacific slope, noble, gallant New Jersey alone 
excepted, as conclusive evidence of the determined 
hostility of the Northern masses to our institutions. 
We believe that he conscientiously entertains the 
opinions which he has so often and so explicitly 
declared, and that, having been elected on the issues 
thus presented, he will honestly endeavor to carry 
them into execution. 

"While now we have no fears of servile insur- 
rection, even of a partial character, we know that 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 223 

his inauguration as President of the United States, 
with our assent, would have been considered by 
many of our slaves as the day of their emancipation ; 
and that the 4th of March would have witnessed, 
in various quarters, outbreaks, which, although they 
would have been promptly suppressed, would have 
carried ruin and devastation to many a Southern 
home, and have cost the lives of hundreds of the 
misguided victims of Northern negrophilism. 

"Senators, six States have now severed the links 
that bound them to a Union to which we were all 
attached, as well by many ties of material well-being 
as by the inheritance of common glories in the past, 
and the well-founded hopes of still more brilliant 
destinies in the future! Twelve seats are now 
vacant on this floor. The work is only just be- 
gun. It requires no spirit of prophecy to point to 
many, many chairs around us that will soon, like 
ours, be unfilled ; and if the weird sisters of the great 
dramatic poet could here be conjured up, they would 
present to the affrighted vision of those on the other 
side of the Chamber, who have so largely contrib- 
uted to 'the deep damnation of this taking off,' a 
'glass to show them many more.' They who have 
so foully murdered the Constitution and the Union 
will find, when too late, like the Scottish Thane, 
that, 'for Banquo's issue they have filled their minds ;' 
'they have but placed upon their heads a fruitless 
crown, and put a barren scepter in their gripe, no 
son of theirs succeeding.' 

"In taking leave of the Senate, while we shall 
carry with us many agreeable recollections of inter- 
course, social and official, with gentlemen who have 



224 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

differed with us on this, the great question of the 
age, we would that we could, in fitting language, 
express the mingled feelings of admiration and re- 
gret with which we look back to our associations 
on this floor with many of our Northern colleagues. 
They have, one after the other, fallen in their heroic 
struggle against a blind fanaticism, until now but 
few — alas! how few — remain to fight the battle of 
the Constitution. Several even of these will ter- 
minate their official career in one short month, and 
will give place to men holding opinions diametrically 
opposite, which have recommended them to the suf- 
frages of their States. Had we remained here, the 
same fate would have awaited, at the next election, 
the four or five last survivors of that gallant band ; 
but now we shall carry with us at least this one 
consoling reflection : our departure realizing all their 
predictions of ill to the Republic, opens a new era 
of triumph for the Democratic party of the North, 
and will, we firmly believe, reestablish its lost as- 
cendency in most of the non-slaveholding States." 



JUDAH P. BENJAMIN 



Judah P. Benjamin — lawyer, author, statesman. 
He achieved distinction in two countries. Before 
he had reached Hfe's meridian he had acquired the 
highest position poHtically in a representative capac- 
ity that our form of government offers. After he 
had passed middle life he took up the profession of 
the law in a new country, and again carved his name 
on the tablet of fame. 

His parents were English Jews. He was born 
in the West Indies in 1811; died in Paris May 6, 
1884. Soon after his birth his family removed to 
Wilmington, N. C. Young Benjamin attended 
school at Fayetteville. Subsequently, he spent 
three years at Yale College. His parents changed 
their residence a number of times, until they finally 
landed in New Orleans, La. There Benjamin 
served in the capacity of a notary, clerk, taught 
school for some time, studied law, and in 1832 was 
admitted to the Louisiana bar. 

Louisiana had been acquired by the United States 
from France but a short time previously, and its 
language and legal system were still largely those of 
France. The broadening influences of the necessary 
mastery of different systems of law and literature 

225 



226 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

left their mark upon Benjamin, and can be traced 
to the breadth of grasp, philosophical reasoning, 
and wide reading to which he subsequently attained. 
Nor should notice be omitted of certain other forma- 
tive influences which the London Times of May 19, 
1884, commented upon in a sympathetically worded 
obituary : 

"His inheritance of that elastic resistance of evil 
fortune which preserved Mr. Benjamin's ancestors 
through a succession of exiles and plunderings re- 
appeared in the minister of the Confederate cause, 
together with the same refined apprehension of 
logical problems which formed the subtleties of 
the Talmud." 

Benjamin's success at the Louisiana bar was re- 
markably rapid. He was an indefatigable worker. 
He early adopted the motto that "There is no excel- 
lence without great labor," and made it the guiding 
principle of his life. Richly endowed by nature, 
coupled with great capacity for work, he had the 
two marked traits that yield to result in the life of 
any who are rich enough to possess them. He pre- 
pared for his own use a digest of the reported de- 
cisions of the Supreme Court of the late Territory 
of Orleans, which was the earliest digest of the 
Louisiana law. Together with his friend, Thomas 
Slidell, he edited and prepared this for publication 
in the year 1834. 

Soon his law practice became more engrossing, 
and as one of the recognized leaders of the Louis- 
iana bar he rapidly acquired a competence which 
enabled him to withdraw from the legal arena, pur- 
chase a sugar plantation near New Orleans, and 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 227 

devote himself to sugar planting and to scientific 
expositions of the best methods of extracting sac- 
charine matter from the cane. Politics actively in- 
terested lawyer Benjamin, and from time to time 
he was elected to various local offices. 

The law seemed to be the charmed circle where 
he was destined to become the central figure, and in 
1840 he resumed the practice of his profession, form- 
ing an association where he soon entered into an 
immense practice, netting the members of the firm 
of Slidell, Benjamin, and Conrad more than $20,000 
each for many successive years. The senior mem- 
ber of the firm was interested as a cotton merchant, 
and \yas one of the large planters of the State. 

In the early existence of the firm Mr. Benjamin 
was principal counsel in a case where insurance was 
claimed arising from an insurrection of slaves while 
on board vessel. It is known in the law in this 
country as the Creole case, and excited great inter- 
est; and was printed and widely circulated because 
of the powerful argument by Mr. Benjamin in con- 
nection with the same. 

In 1847 the Government appointed a commission 
to investigate Spanish land titles, and Mr. Benjamin 
was retained as counsel with a fee of $25,000. He 
was absent a year on this commission, at the end of 
which time he returned to New Orleans and was 
admitted a councilor of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, and from that period he was recog- 
nized in cases argued before that august tribunal. 
The law reports of legal cases of that period are 
evidence of the large number of famous cases with 
which he was associated. 



228 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

About 1847 Mr. Benjamin engaged more actively 
in politics. All his life he had been an ardent Whig, 
but in the early fifties that old party was disrupted, 
and he affiliated with the Democrats. He was 
elected for the first time to the United States Senate 
in 1852 and reelected in 1857, having for his col- 
league John Slidell. His entry in the United States 
Senate marked perhaps the most attractive time of 
his life, and he soon made a profound impression in 
this body. Charles Sumner, his constant political 
opponent, regarded him as the most eloquent speaker 
in that body, and Sir George Cornwall Lewis, who 
was present and heard his remarkable address of 
the 31st of December, i860, in which he justified 
the right of the States to secede and declared his 
adhesion to the cause of the Southern Confederacy, 
said: "It is better than our Benjamin [referring 
to Disraeli] could have done." It was in this cele- 
brated speech that he reached the eloquent climax 
where these words went home to the very hearts and 
souls of his auditors : 

"Now, Senators, this picture is not placed before 
you with any idea that it will act upon any one of 
vou or change your views or alter your conduct. 
All hope of that is gone. Our Committee has 
reported this morning that no possible scheme of 
adjustment can be devised by them all combined. 
The day for the adjustment has passed. If you 
would give it now you are too late. And now, 
Senators, within a few weeks we part to meet as 
Senators in one Common Council Chamber of 
the Union no more forever. We desire, we be- 
seech you, let this parting be in peace. I conjure 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 2:29 

you to indulge in no vain delusion that duty or con- 
science, interest or honor, imposes upon you the 
necessity of invading our States or shedding the 
blood of our people. You have no possible justi- 
fication for it. I trust it is in no craven spirit and 
with no sacrifice of the honor or dignity of my own 
State that I make this last appeal, but from far 
higher motives. If, however, it shall prove vain, 
if you are resolved to pervert the Government 
framed by the fathers for the protection of our 
rights into an instrument for subjugating and en- 
slaving us, then appealing to the Supreme Judge of 
the universe for the rectitude of our intentions, we 
must meet the issue that you force upon us as best 
becomes free men defending all that is dear to man. 
"What may be the fate of this horrible contest 
no man can tell, none pretend to foresee, but this 
much I will say, the fortunes of war may be adverse 
to our arms; you may carry desolation into our 
peaceful land, and with torch and fire you may set 
our cities in flames ; you may even emulate the atro- 
cities of those who in the War of the Revolution 
hounded on the bloodthirsty savage to attack upon 
the defenseless frontier; you may, under the pro- 
tection of your advancing armies, give shelter to the 
furious fanatics who desire and profess to desire 
nothing more than to add all the horrors of a servile 
insurrection to the calamities of civil war. You 
may do all this, and more too, if more there be — but 
you never can subjugate us, you never can convert 
the free sons of the soil into vassals paying tribute 
to your power, and you never, never can degrade 
them to the level of an inferior and servile race, 



230 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

never, never." [Loud applause in the galleries.] 

The debates in the United States Senate from 
1852 up to and including 1861 contain many 
speeches of Mr. Benjamin, and his rich, varied 
thought that reflected light on every public question 
of that time. 

President Franklin Pierce, in recognition of his 
admirable legal talents, offered Mr. Benjamin the 
position of Associate Justice on the Supreme Court 
Bench of the United States, which he respectfully 
declined, preferring to remain in the active practice 
of his profession. 

After South Carolina passed the ordinance of se- 
cession he made several brilliant speeches in the 
Senate on constitutional questions from his stand- 
point, and he was always ready to defend the rights 
of the States on legal grounds. Immediately after 
he withdrew from the Senate Chamber and deliv- 
ered his celebrated farewell address, fearing arrest, 
he hastily left Washington. Upon the formation 
of the provisional government of the Southern 
Confederacy, Mr. Benjamin was appointed to the 
post of the Department of Justice, and Mr. Jefferson 
Davis, in his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
Government," says of him at that juncture: "Mr. 
Benjamin had a very high reputation as a lawyer, 
and my acquaintance with him in the Senate im- 
pressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his 
systematic habits and capacity for labor." 

In August he was transferred from the Depart- 
ment of Justice of the Confederate States to the 
Department of War, in which office he continued 
until the reconstruction of the Cabinet in 1862, when 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 231 

he became Secretary of State, where he remained 
until the final overthrow of the Confederacy. His 
exertions in the discharge of his official duties were 
so great as to almost break down his iron strength. 
Beginning work at his office at eight in the morn- 
ing he remained there often eighteen hours, hard at 
his labors, with only a few moments' respite for 
meals. He had the reputation of being the brain 
of the Confederacy, and it is alleged that Mr. Davis 
fell into the habit of putting upon Mr. Benjamin 
all the matter that did not obviously belong to some 
other Department. A long sketch of his life re- 
ferring to that position and the part he took in the 
administration of the affairs of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment says: "The character of Mr. Davis's 
government and the secrecy often observed in the 
debates of the House of Representatives render it 
doubtful how far Mr. Benjamin was responsible for 
the arljitrary measures which marked the conduct 
of the war by the Confederates." 

In spite of the high opinion Mr. Davis has formed 
of him, some of his measures were sharply opposed 
in the House, and the severe criticism evoked by 
his conscription law led to his resignation in 1862, 
when he resumed the position of Secretary of State, 
which office he retained until the collapse of the 
Confederacy in 1865. 

James Schoulter, in the "History of the United 
States," remarks : 

"Contemporaries had said at the outset that 
Toombs was the brain of the Confederacy, but that 
title, as events developed, belonged rather to Attor- 
ney-General Benjamin, the ablest, most versatile, 



232 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

and most constant of Mr. Davis's civil councilors, 
w^ho acted as Secretary of War after Walker's re- 
tirement in September, and was then by the follow- 
ing March installed Secretary of State, to remain 
premier until the bitter end, sanguine and serene in 
bearing throughout all mutations of fortune and 
misfortune." 

On the collapse of the Confederate Government 
Mr. Benjamin fled from Richmond, and his adven- 
tures, which are briefly quoted from authentic Con- 
federate archives, recite that his escape to England 
was of a most romantic nature. Mr. Davis de- 
parted from Richmond after the news of Lee's sur- 
render at Appomattox Court House, accompanied 
by the members of his Cabinet, leaving Greensboro, 
N. C, on the 12th of April, 1865. Mr. Benjamin, 
to whom corpulence had made riding rather diffi- 
cult, insisted that an ambulance should be found for 
him, and in this he rode with his brother-in-law, 
M. Jules, St. Martin, and General Cooper. The 
roads getting worse, he rode on a tall horse from 
Abbeyville, S. C, reaching the other side of the 
Savannah River, and then, unable to ride farther, 
and scenting danger from so large a party, he on the 
4th day of May, 1865, made for the seacoast, "in- 
tending," says Mr. Davis, "to make his way by 
Cuba to Mexico, and thence to Texas, to join me 
wherever (with such troops as might be assembled) 
I should be at the anticipated time, and still hope 
that it might be a more successful struggle in the 
future." He carried with him an army certificate, 
a free pass to all Confederate oflices, certifying him 
a French subject, and it was agreed that if he fell 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 233 

in with any Federal troops he was to keep up the 
deception by using French, which language he spoke 
like a native. Ill luck followed him. He escaped 
from the coast of Florida in a leaky, open boat, 
sailed thence in a vessel laden with sponges for 
Nassau, and after being wrecked on the way he was 
picked up by a British man-of-war and carried to 
St. Thomas. The steamer in which he sailed thence 
for England caught fire, and he had to put back. 
By this time the final collapse of the Confederacy 
was assured, and Mr. Benjamin went into exile. 
He landed in Liverpool almost penniless, and with 
the exception of a small sum remitted to England, 
all his fortune was lost or confiscated. 

Arriving in London he claimed to be a British 
subject, and was recognized, fifty-five years after his 
birth, as is attested by a statement in his own hand- 
writing in the books of Lincoln's Inn. He at once 
entered as a student of English law in the pupil room 
of Mr. Charles Pollock, but through the friendly in- 
tercourse of Lord Chief Justice Giffard and Vice- 
Chancellor Page Wood a dispensation from the 
usual three years of studentship was procured for 
him, and he was admitted to the English bar on the 
6th day of June, 1866, at the age of fifty-five. He 
immediately attached himself to the old Northern 
Circuit, where he was befriended by Messrs Quain 
and Holkar, leaders of the circuit; but for a time 
he received little practice, his only clients being 
Messrs. Stone. Fletcher, and Hull, who. through 
their London agents, introduced him to London 
work. On the rendition of his first brief Lord 
Justice Lush congratulated him, but his misfor- 



234 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

tunes seemed to cling- to him for a time, and he 
was compelled to resort to journalism to support 
himself. His great work on the English law ap- 
peared in 1868. Its success was speedy, both in 
England and in the United States, a second and 
third edition appearing in 1883, the revision of a 
portion of which was the final task of Mr. Ben- 
jamin's talents before his health broke down. After 
the first appearance of this book his practice in- 
creased enormously. His income for a number of 
years prior to his retirement from the bar is said to 
have been upward of $20,000 per annum. In 1872 
he attained the rank of Queen's counsel. His pre- 
eminence in tb.e law at the Court of the English 
Government was the subject of comment among 
his contemporaries in the practice of the law, as 
it has been given to few men to reach within such 
a brief period the culminating success he attained. 
He had a great faculty for argumentative state- 
ments, and would put his case at once fairly, and yet 
so that it would seem to admit of no reply. Natu- 
rally he objected to being interrupted in court. Once 
in the House of Lords, so he told the story, he heard 
a noble lord (it is believed to have been Lord 
Cairns) on some proposition of his to ejaculate 
"Nonsense!" Mr. Benjamin stopped, tied up his 
brief, bowed, and retired, but the Lords sent him a 
public conciliatory message, and his junior was al- 
lowed to finish the argument. His power of stat- 
ing his own case properly was the cause of the very 
sanguine character of the opinions he gave on cases 
laid before him. Among his best arguments are 
those of Debenhan vs. Mellon, United States of 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 235 

America vs. Rae, the Franconia case, — one of his 
rare appearances in a criminal court, — and the 
Tichborne Appeal to the House of Lords. 

A farewell dinner was given in Mr. Benjamin's 
honor by the bench and bar of England in the Hall 
of the Inner Temple, London, on June 30, 1883, 
under the Presidency of the Attorney-General, Sir 
Henry James. His standing as the unquestioned 
leader of the British bar had been generally recog- 
nized for some time prior to his retirement. 

He was a great sufferer during the last years of 
his life from weakness of the heart. In 1880 he 
fell from a street-car in Paris, receiving a severe in- 
jury. Two years later he was compelled to give up 
all work and to relinquish many cases which he had 
engaged to try. From the date of his injury his 
health failed rapidly, and on the 6th day of May, 
1884, he died. 

By his will made in 1883 he left a personalty of 
$300,000. He left no memoirs, as it was his in- 
variable habit to destroy all private documents. 

In his habits of life he exhibited a great deal of 
the Southern temperament. He was skilful at 
games, and used to say that he loved to "bask in the 
sun like a lizard." On compulsion he would work 
into the small hours of the morning, but he pre- 
ferred to postpone his dinner until late, so as to 
complete what he had to do, and he owned that to 
rise and to work early in the morning was impossible 
to him. 

To the last his loyalty to the lost cause of the 
Southern Confederacy was retained, and he was 
always bountiful to those whom he met who had suf- 



236 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

fered for it. Investigation has failed to confirm 
the rumor that he abandoned the Jewish faith on his 
death-bed. The late Isaac M. Wise, in his "Remi- 
niscences," gives an account of an interesting dis- 
cussion between Benjamin, Daniel Webster, Maury, 
the scientist, and himself, relative to their religious 
faiths, in the course of which Benjamin declined to 
permit his Jewish religious views to be described as 
Unitarian, as Webster claimed the faiths of all four 
were in their essence. 

In 1854 he presented to the Senate on behalf of 
American Jewish citizens a petition calling for gov- 
ernmental action against Swiss anti-Jewish discrim- 
inations recognized in a treaty with our Government, 
acting as spokesman for American Jews. 

He was recognized in the Senate as one of the 
ablest debaters. His readiness in debate was re- 
markable. As a rule he spoke on the spur of the 
moment, without preparation. One of his col- 
leagues has said that he was the best extempora- 
neous speaker on the floor of the Senate. When we 
refer to the Congressional Record of that period we 
are impressed by what is set forth there, in that it 
frequently happened that his friends were so much 
impressed with his oratory as to be obliged to pay 
tribute to him on the spot. 

In the Senate Mr. Benjamin's constitutional and 
legal arguments attracted attention and made him 
the leader par excellence in the defense of the mo- 
mentous issues that pressed themselves upon Con- 
gress at that time. Senator Benjamin w,as frequently 
called upon to deliver orations on national holidays, 
and on other non-political occasions. Competent 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 237 

judges declare that he was often happier at these 
times than in his political addresses and arguments. 
His right to be regarded as one of the world's 
greatest orators is no longer a question. It was 
recently forcibly brought to our attention from ap- 
propriate examples of his style in the comprehensive 
series of articles "The World's Best Orators," as 
well as in "The World's Best Orations," the latter 
edited by Justice David J. Brewer. 

Henry L. Dawes classed Benjamin with Sumner, 
Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Yancey, and Breckin- 
ridge, as having stirred multitudes, aroused passions, 
and fired the public heart in terms not less eloquent 
than the loftiest productions of Fox, of Pitt, of 
Patrick Henry, or John Adams. 

The religious faith of Mr. Benjamin should not 
be called in question. We have the testimony of his 
intimates that he relied on a higher power and was 
a firm believer in a future life. In his eulogy de- 
livered on Senator Evans, in May, 1858, he reveals 
a glimmer of his hope of immortality. He says : 

"Let us thank God that his last moments were 
cheered by the conviction that imminence of the 
danger had passed away, that the lowering clouds 
had parted, that the fair blue sky again gave promise 
of calm and of sunshine, and that bright rays of 
hope gilded the dying couch of the departed 
patriot." 



EDWARD DICKINSON BAKER 



Edward Dickinson Baker was born in London, 
England, on February 24, 181 1. His family came 
to the United States about the year 1815, and set- 
tled in Philadelphia. They were highly respectable 
persons of energy, good sense, and accomplished 
education. Upon the arrival of his family in Phil- 
adelphia they taught school for a few years, success- 
fully, at a time when that city was probably most 
renowned of any in the Union for the excellence of 
its institutions of learning. After a short residence 
in Philadelphia, they changed to Springfield, 111. 

From the outset of Baker's career in that State 
he took a prominent part in the discussion of public 
affairs, and acquired considerable reputation as a 
public man. In 1832 he was a major in what is 
known as the Black Hawk War. 

By the exertion of his own extraordinary abili- 
ties he soon attained a high rank in his profession — 
and this is no slight praise, for "there were giants 
in the land in those days." Hardin, Lincoln, 
Douglas, and Logan were his rivals, and acknowl- 
edged his prowess. He was a member of the Legis- 
lature of the State of Illinois for ten consecutive 
years. In 1845 he entered the House of Repre- 
sentatives from the Springfield district of Illinois, a 

238 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 239 

member of the 29th Congress. During this Con- 
gress war existed with Mexico, and Baker left his 
place in the House, went to Illinois and raised the 
Fourth Regiment from that State, He went with 
his regiment to the deadly banks of the Rio Grande, 
and entered the command of General Taylor. In 
December, 1846, he returned from Mexico, and 
yielding to the demands of public business, appeared 
in the House of Representatives and delivered a 
speech remarkable for its force and patriotic feeling, 
which quelled partisan opposition and secured an 
additional appropriation for the comfort of the sol- 
diers in the field. Immediately thereafter he re- 
signed his seat in Congress and returned forthwith 
to Mexico. Soon afterwards he was engaged at the 
battle of Cerro Gordo, where the brave General 
Shields was wounded severely, and Baker, having 
charge of the attacking column, assumed command. 
History tells the story of the courage he displayed 
while in command of the Fourth Illinois Regiment 
on that terrible but glorious day. The war over, 
he returned to Illinois, and the State honored him 
with a sword in grateful recognition of his services. 
About 1849, while a resident of the Springfield 
district, party friends urged him to come to the 
Galena district, then overwhelmingly Democratic. 
After some persuasion he demonstrated that self- 
reliance always manifest in him. He took up his 
residence in the Galena district, and determined to 
attack the citadel of the Democratic faith. As 
some one has said, "he went with the sling of Free- 
dom and the pebble of Truth," and the giant of 
Democracy fell before him. He served in the 31st 



240 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

Congress as a member from Galena district, and 
again achieved distinction in this Congress. 

In the summer of 1852 he determined to cast his 
fortunes in the Western country, and arrived in 
CaHfornia in the latter part of June of that year. 
He at once attained a high position in his profes- 
sion, and it would take some pages to recount his 
triumphs with the eminent men at the bar. He had a 
reputation everywhere for his ability in cases of life 
and death, and seemed to be irresistible before a jury 
by the magic of his eloquence, and deprived men of 
their reason, as it were, as he overwhelmed them 
in admiration for his transcendent genius. By 
common consent he was regarded as having no rival 
in this branch of his profession. A member of the 
bar and a life-long friend of Baker who was actively 
engaged in the profession of law in San Francisco 
at that time, writes : 

"It would be a grateful task to me and a most 
agreeable one to dwell upon the beauties of many of 
his speeches. Who but Baker could draw such 
houses in Old Music Hall? Who could call alike 
the student and the mechanic to hear him discourse 
on the advantages of free labor and the duty of 
Government to protect and encourage it? Who 
could dim the eye of beauty with a tear of sympathy 
and soften the heart of the miser in one and the 
same effort, while he pleaded the cause of benevo- 
lence and charity ? Who like him could call the miner 
from digging gold, the farmer from his plow, the 
man of business from his work, while he talked as 
one inspired of the thousand blessings of our Union 
and the greatness that awaited us in the future? 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 241 

How often, when we have thus heard him, with a 
heart overflowing with patriotism and an eye of fire, 
when he spoke of the inestimable value of our Con- 
stitution and Union, of our mission among the na- 
tions of the earth, when he seemed to 'stoop to touch 
the loftiest thought' which other men would toil 
laboriously to reach, have we thought he appeared 
to be the very personification of what the poet has 
said : 'How noble in reason, infinite in faculties ; 
in form and moving, how express and admirable; 
in apprehension, how like a god !' " 

He remained in California until i860. He then 
made another change. It is a trite old saying that 
"a rolling stone gathers no moss." It had no ap- 
plication to the life of General Baker. He was 
superior to every obstacle, and seemed to have gifts 
that could surmount every difficulty. He deter- 
mined to take up his abode in Oregon, and within 
one brief span of six months he achieved what no 
other man but E. D. Baker could perform. It was 
"an easy leap to pluck bright honor from the pale- 
faced moon." His friends tried to dissuade him, 
but his determination was fixed and unalterable. 
He went to Oregon. Crowds flocked to hear him. 
In less than six months he was on his way to Wash- 
ington, a United States Senator from that State. 
He had reached the very acme of his ambition. 
He had reached the last round of the ladder of fame. 
He had realized his life-long aspiration — he was a 
United States Senator. 

He took his seat in the Senate Chamber in Decem- 
ber, i860. Much was expected of him, and he did 
not disappoint the hopes of his friends. We find 



243 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

him in the very brunt of the battle, in the front of 
the arena. In January, 1861, clashing in debate 
with the talented Benjamin, a skilful and accom- 
plished orator of high exploit in the Senate, — "a 
fairer person lost no heaven," — he made a great 
speech, celebrated for strength of argument, logical 
power, and majestic eloquence which would have 
honored the old Senate in the days of Webster, Clay, 
and Calhoun. They were days thrilling and sensa- 
tional, which are referred to in other pages of this 
book. A more noteworthy scene has never been pic- 
tured in legislative annals than the great mental 
combat between Baker and Breckinridge, drawing 
swords, metaphorically, over the constitutional is- 
sues of that day, and the logical and forceful debates 
with Benjamin, Toombs, and Davis. 

What a quick, rapid career this man lived! He 
seemed to be born under a star of destiny that made 
him a marked man from the beginning. Born to 
poverty, in his very boyhood he takes front rank 
in all the pursuits that he follows. Before he has 
attained his majority he masters the law out of bor- 
rowed books, and from the time that he is admitted 
to the bar he has rapid success in his chosen profes- 
sion — conspicuous at the bar in Springfield, a legis- 
lator, a Congressman ; a new home in the West with 
a national distinction to follow as a lawyer of 
renown, for that is what he acquired in California; 
and in a span he adopts the State of Oregon as his 
home and becomes a Senator within a few days, as 
it were. As a Senator he overrides all precedent, 
and we find him in the foreground from the very 
beginning of his Senatorship. It was not to be 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 243 

that he should remain long on the Senate floor. It 
seemed to be ordered otherwise by fate. The ruling 
passion of his soul that "made his ambition virtue," 
an unconquerable wish to serve his country downed 
or suppressed all selfish suggestions of comfort. 
To repeat his own words in the House of Represen- 
tatives in 1850: "I have bared my bosom to the 
battles of the Northwestern frontier in my youth, 
and on the Southwestern frontier in my manhood; 
and if the time should come when disunion rules 
the hour and discord is to reign supreme, / shall 
again be ready to give the best blood in my veins 
to my country's cause.'' Magic words of a brave 
man ! The time had come when he was ready to do 
at the cannon's mouth what he had declared. His 
noble soul was on the side of his country in the 
frightful contest, the fratricidal War of the Rebel- 
lion. His views in the Senate and in public assem- 
blies stirred the hearts of his countrymen to rally 
to the support of "the best Government God ever 
gave to man." 

No sketch of the life of General Baker would be 
complete that did not have a reference, though it 
may be a brief one, to his eloquent speech delivered 
on the amendments to the Constitution Wednesday, 
January 2, 1861, in the United States Senate, as 
follows : 

"Mr. President, the adventurous traveler who 
wanders on the slopes of the Pacific and on the very 
verge of civilization stands awestruck and aston- 
ished in that great chasm formed by the torrent of 
the Columbia as rushing between Mount Hood and 
Mount St. Helens it breaks through the ridges of 



244 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

the Cascade Mountains to find the sea. Nor is his 
wonder lessened when he hears his loudest tone re- 
peated and reechoed with a larger utterance in rever- 
berations that lose themselves at last amid the sur- 
rounding and distant hills. So I, standing on this 
spot and speaking for the first time in this Chamber, 
reflect with astonishment that my feeblest word is 
reechoed, even while I speak, to the confines of the 
Republic. I trust, sir, that in so speaking in the 
midst of such an auditory and in the presence of 
great events, I may remember all the responsibility 
these impose upon me to perform my duty to the 
Constitution of the United States which I have 
sworn to support, and to be in no wise forgetful of 
my obligation to the whole country, of which I am 
a devoted and affectionate son." 

When Congress adjourned he attended a public 
meeting in New York in April, 1861, probably the 
largest ever held in the country at that time, and 
there surrounded by able men of that great city 
he aroused his countrymen to greater efforts in be- 
half of the Union. It was on that occasion he 
spoke by the side of the lion-hearted and patriotic 
Dickinson, himself remarkable for intellect and 
oratory, who, in a speech in Brooklyn, thus spoke 
of General Baker: 

"Alas, poor Baker! He was swifter than an 
eagle, stronger than a lion ; the very soul of bravery 
and manly daring. He spoke by my side at the 
great Union Square meeting in April, and his words 
of fiery and patriotic eloquence yet ring upon my 
ear. And has that noble heart ceased to throb- 
that pulse to play ? Has that beaming eye closed in 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 24S 

death ? Has that tongue of eloquence been silenced 
forever? Yes, he has died in the cause of 
humanity — 

"'Whether on the scaffold high, 
Or in the army's van, 
The fittest place for man to die 
Is where he dies for man !' " 

It is not necessary to discuss why the battle of 
Edward's Ferry was not different. To Baker's 
fame it is all right. He fell in the cause of human 
liberty, in defense of the Union. He fell with his 
"back to the field and his face to the foe," and so 
long as liberty has a votary on earth, so long as 
the name of Washington is revered among men 
and his principles cherished by his countrymen, so 
long will the name of Baker be remembered with 
gratitude and admiration. 

One eulogist says of him : 

"No man who knew Baker can doubt the sincerity 
of his noble disinterestedness to his political princi- 
ples. In Illinois, in California, against overwhelm- 
ing odds, he kept on in the even tenor of his way. 
As a statesman he was fixed and steadfast in the 
advocacy of his principles. He did not propose to 
embark with his friends on 'the smooth surface of a 
summer sea.' He was 

" 'Constant as the Northern Star, 
Of whose true, fixed and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament.'" 

In political contests he was undaunted ; on the eve 
of battle he was unconquerable. With that dash 
of noble daring akin to genius that was ever aflame 



246 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

within him he would go where others seemed to 
fear to tread. 

The day dawned on the 21st of October, 1861, 
of what was to be the most glorious epoch of his 
life. When he crossed the Potomac he went in 
obedience to duty's call to the "whole country, of 
which he was a devoted and affectionate son." He 
believed he was right and acting in the path of duty ; 
and we can imagine as he stood on the banks of the 
Potomac, whose rushing waters, red with patriotic 
blood, were in a few hours to dash their waves on 
Mt. Vernon's shore, that he had some knowledge of 
the danger of death before him, that he had in his 
mind the noble thoughts to which he gave utter- 
ance in the Senate on the 2d of January previous : 

"Right and duty are always majestic ideas. They 
march an invisible guard in the van of all true 
progress. They animate the loftiest spirit in the 
public assemblies; they nerve the arm of the war- 
rior; they kindle the soul of the statesman and the 
imagination of the poet ; they sweeten every reward ; 
they console every defeat. Sir, they are themselves 
an indissoluble chain which binds feeble, erring 
humanity to the eternal throne of God." 

It was on the fatal day of the battle of Ball's Bluff, 
while riding in front of his men and encouraging 
them by his cheerful words and manly bearing, that 
he was stricken, shot from his horse while rallying 
his forces on to victory. 

A celebrated man thus speaks of him : 

"He had as much unworldhness as Goldsmith; 
no love of filthy lucre ever found a resting-place 
in his heart. For years I have known him well, 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 247 

and part of the time was associated with him in 
business, and never heard a profane word from his 
hps. He never uttered or wrote a line that could 
impair the high views of any one. As a man he 
was possessed of that most excellent gift, charity 
toward all who differed with him. He never in- 
dulged in bitterness of speech toward political oppo- 
nents, nor toward those who had done him personal 
wrong. I have never known a man in public life 
whose heart more abounded in generous philan- 
thropy for all mankind. He exhibited this feeling 
at the bar when he was conscious of his superiority 
over a younger adversary. He would have mani- 
fested the same generosity had he been victorious 
in the last battle of his life, and deserved the eulo- 
gium pronounced by him on General Taylor : 'Nor, 
sir, can we forget that in the flush of victory the 
gentle heart stayed the bold hand while the con- 
quering soldier offered sacrifice on the altar of pity 
amid all the exultation of triumph.' " 

It has fallen to the lot of few men to be dis- 
tinguished at the bar, in popular assemblies, in the 
Senate, and in the tented field. Viewed in this 
light Baker's fame is the "tall cliff whose form over- 
shadows other men of his day." Excepting our 
own Webster, no man of modern times has been so 
successful as Baker in the forum, in the Senate, and 
before popular assemblies. 

We honor him especially for the spirit, which, like 
Curtis, prompted him to plunge in the gulf in the 
hope of saving his country. He was not impelled 
by any dream of ambition. Not being born in the 
United States he could not be President. He had 



248 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

attained the highest position, in his opinion, ori 
earth — a station, as he said, "more exalted than that 
of a Roman Senator." He had attained a position 
among the first debaters in the Senate. His friend 
with whom he had played in childhood had become 
President of the United States, and that friend still 
loved him and rejoiced at his success. 

At the union mass meeting in New York City, 
May 20, 1 86 1, General Baker thus concluded a 
speech of great eloquence and power : 

"And if, from the far Pacific, a voice feebler than 
the feeblest murmur upon its shore may be heard 
to give you courage and hope in that contest, that 
voice is yours to-day. And if a man whose hair is 
gray, who is well-nigh worn out in the battle and 
toil of life, may pledge himself on such an occasion 
and in such an audience, let me say, as my last word, 
that amid sheeted fire and flame I saw and led the 
hosts of New York as they charged in contest upon 
a foreign soil for the honor of your flag; so again, 
if Providence shall will it, this feeble hand shall 
draw a sword never yet dishonored — not to fight 
for distant honor in a foreign land, but to fight for 
country, for home, for law, for Government, for 
Constitution, for right, for freedom, for humanity, 
and in the hope that the banner of my country may 
advance, and wheresoever that banner waves, there 
glory may pursue and freedom be established." 

It would be unjust to his memory to omit to speak 
of his funeral oration over the dead body of Senator 
Broderick, who died under the "code of honor." 
That one effort should crown him with immortality. 
Baker was a brave man. He has proved it often. 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 249 

He proved it on the bloody field of Cerro Gordo, 
when he was praised by the greatest of living sol- 
diers. Yet he knew that dueling was wrong. He 
gave his unqualified condemnation to a code which 
offers to personal vindictiveness a life due only to a 
country and to its Creator. Broderick had many 
good qualities that called forth Baker's admiration. 
Both had arisen from poverty. But let his denun- 
ciation of this barbarous code be remembered to his 
undying hour : 

"To-day I renew my protest ; to-day I utter yours. 
The code of honor is a delusion and a snare. It 
palters the hope of a true courage and binds it at 
the feet of crafty and cruel skill. It surrounds its 
victim with the pomp and grace of the procession 
but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It substitutes 
cold and deliberate preparation for manly impulse, 
and arms the one to disarm the other. It may pre- 
vent fraud between practiced duelists — who should 
be forever without its pale — but it makes the mere 
'trick of the weapon' superior to the noblest cause 
and the truest courage. The habitue of arms, the 
early training, the frontier life, the bloody war, the 
sectional custom, the life of leisure, all these are 
advantages which no negotiations can neutralize and 
no courage overcome." 

There was a moral courage and sublimity in it 
that has a fadeless luster, reflected by his glorious 
death. Not far from each other — 

"Where ocean tells its rushing waves 
To murmur dirges round their graves" — 

these two distinguished men will repose in Lone 
Mountain Cemetery until the trump of the Arch- 



250 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

angel shall sound and summon this "mortal to put 
on immortality." Let their monuments arise to 
meet the eye of the ocean-worn exile as he comes 
nearer to his haven of rest. Let them tell the trav- 
eler, as the landscape fades from his sight on leav- 
ing our gorgeous land, that "the paths of glory lead 
but to the grave." Let parents of unnumbered 
generations encourage their children to love that 
country for which Baker died — to cherish our Gov- 
ernment and its institutions which can thus advance 
the humblest of her sons. There let them rest, 
respected for their services, mourned by thousands 
of all nations now present who will unite with us in 
saying : 

"When Spring with dewy fingers cold 
Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod." 



JOHN C BRECKINRIDGE 



John C. Breckinridge enjoyed the distinction of 
being the youngest man to hold the high office of 
Vice-President of the United States. John Adams 
was 54 years old when elected to the Vice-Presi- 
dency ; Jefferson, 53 ; Burr, 54 ; Clinton, 65 ; Gerry, 
65; Tompkins, 43; Calhoun, 43; Van Buren, 50; 
Johnson, 57; Tyler, 51; Dallas, 53; Millard Fill- 
more, 48; William R. King, 66; while the subject 
of this sketch was 35 when elected to the high office. 
He was by far the youngest of the most prominent 
men of his day. He had a career that inspired self- 
reliance, and the rivalry of more experienced states- 
men never shadowed his brilliancy of intellect, his 
oratory, his dauntless and matchless statesmanship. 

John C. Breckinridge was a native of Kentucky. 
He was born near Lexington on the i6th day of 
January 1821; educated at Center College; enjoyed 
the benefits of some months at Princeton ; and after 
a brief preparatory course in the law was admitted 
to the bar at Lexington. 

Confident that a more fruitful field opened to him 
in the Northwest, he took up a residence at Burling- 
ton, Iowa, where after a short abode he returned 
to his native State. He entered immediately upon 
the practice of his profession, and met with well- 

251 



252 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

merited success. The trump of war excited mili- 
tary ardor in the young Kentuckian, and the result 
was creditable service as a major of infantry during 
the Mexican War. 

On the return of Breckinridge from Mexico he 
was elected to the Kentucky Legislature, and created 
a favorable impression as a legislator. He was after- 
wards elected to Congress from the Ashland dis- 
trict, and being reelected, held his seat from 1851 
to 1855. 

It was not long before the name of Breckinridge 
was in the mouths, so to speak, of all reading people. 
He quickly won renown in the House of Representa- 
tives, where his clear, succinct statements and his 
logical presentation of every subject that he treated 
caused him to be put in the category of fluent speak- 
ers, and so fond were the members of hearing him 
address the House that whenever he took the floor 
the Speaker was glad to give him such time and 
recognition as a member was entitled to in that day. 
The records of Congress portray and bring out 
many of his beautiful and attractive speeches. Our 
attention is drawn to a sympathetic address he de- 
livered in the form of a eulogy in support of a reso- 
lution he introduced on the 30th day of June, 1852, 
in respect to the memory of Henry Clay, who had 
just died the day previous. Mr. Breckinridge laid 
the fulness of his young heart on the grave of the 
great Kentuckian, in whom intellect, person, elo- 
quence, and courage united to form a character fit 
to command. 

"Standing by that grave, and with the memories 
of the great dead about him, the legerdemain of 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 253 

politics appeared contemptible to him. What a re- 
proach was Clay's life to the false policy which 
would trifle with a great and upright people." 

"If I were to write his epitaph," said Breckin- 
ridge, "I would inscribe as the highest eulogy on 
the stone which would mark his resting place, 'Here 
lies a man who was in the public service for fifty 
years and never attempted to deceive his country- 
men.' " 

In the 32d Congress Mr. Breckinridge was instru- 
mental in securing an appropriation for the comple- 
tion of a cemetery near the City of Mexico, in which 
the remains of the American officers and soldiers 
who fell in battle in or near the city could be in- 
terred. He also secured an appropriation for a 
weekly mail with the Pacific, and advocated putting 
this contract out to the lowest bidder. Though he 
was not constantly in debate before the House, he 
took a prominent position, and sometimes in debate 
was sharp and effective. 

He was elected Vice-President, having received 
173 electoral votes, being 59 votes over William L. 
Dayton, the Republican candidate for the same office. 
Thus at the age of thirty-five he had served his 
country in war; had been a legislator in his native 
State and in the National Legislature; had been 
tendered the representation of the Republic in 
Europe, and elected to the second office in the gift 
of the people. Truly might the lines of the poet be 
applied to him : "He is almost sunk beneath the 
weight of trust and offices not merely offered but 
imposed upon him." 

It is noteworthy that after the smoke of battle had 



254 THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 

cleared away and the old Southern States sought 
anew their place in the Union under the protection 
of the flag, few of the great men of the old regime 
were permitted to take up the standard anew. Some 
were living in foreign lands, some had just returned 
to their old homes, broken in health by the rigors of 
war and all that it imposed on them ; still others had 
passed to the "bourn from whence no traveler re- 
turns." How have the mighty fallen! 

Is there an impartial writer of Southern history? 
Can the dead past be revealed in its true colors? 
Can the anguish, the mortification, the suffering of 
those years that followed the Rebellion ever be 
brought out by a disinterested, dispassionate, or 
calm pen? It is a sad picture when we look upon it, 
when we look into the old Senate Chamber in i860 
and see these men in their prime, with the very mag- 
nificence of Southern gallantry, with the courage of 
conviction something like that our forefathers had 
when they were willing to forfeit their lives and 
their fortunes for the Republic — it is a sad portrayal 
when we see these magnificent, grand men laying 
down their lives on the altar of conviction. 

The life of Breckinridge alone is a pathetic story. 
He was one of the last senatorial group to cast his 
fortunes with the South. Great man — with all those 
characteristics that command the admiration and 
laudation of his fellows; born to command, with 
wealth on one side to promote his eminence and 
natural ability, holding an office that was second to 
the Presidency. It truly touches the hearts of all 
lovers of impartial history to look upon his life and 
see within what a short span it is reduced to the po- 



THE GREAT PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE 255 

sition of being- despoiled, as it were ; for though not 
yet in his prime when the Confederacy failed, he 
seemed to abandon hope, and never wielded a strong 
hand again, and never asserted himself more with 
the courage of old. After taking part in the Rebel- 
lion as a general — the war over — he resumed the 
practice of his profession. He died at Lexington, 
Ky., May 19, 1875, leaving a spotless reputation. 



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